The Woodlanders

The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was

lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He

went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that

of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he

found the room empty. A fire burning low in the grate was the sole

light of the apartment; its beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat

showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that

of the structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and

probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English gloom

of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law

here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire,

and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not

dined there that day.

By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified. Everything here

was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer

incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The

comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion,

rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and

proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had

suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were

justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might

end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his daughter's

dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace

hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational

course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs.

Charmond.

He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door

of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which

was not the crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to

a distance of a few inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures

in the act of stepping out--a man and a woman--in whom he recognized

the lady of the house and his son-in-law. In a moment they had

disappeared amid the gloom of the lawn.

He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance

door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures

parting at the railing which divided the precincts of the house from

the open park. Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that

Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the

duskiness of the trees.