The Woodlanders

There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters

concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock--that

Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a departure

in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little

reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his

destination, and to divine his errand.

Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in

truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not

know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of

Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous

irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring

her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of

mind, she left the house about three o'clock, and took a loitering walk

in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This

track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and

roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of

boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees

behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his

men were clearing the undergrowth.

Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not

have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the opposite

glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace

herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her

father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's return with his

tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to

her.

She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of

the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. "I am

only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic

intonation.

"I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may perhaps have

gone on farther."

"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said, turning her

large tender eyes anxiously upon him. "Did he tell you what for?"

Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her

father had visited him the evening before, and that their old

friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.

"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she cried.

And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling

each other's souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of

these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them,

craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan

life of her father which in the best probable succession of events

would shortly be denied her.