The Woodlanders

"Yes," said Winterborne.

She glanced ponderingly up at him. "Not about me?"

"Yes."

His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been

bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to

give. The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace

for the moment. However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom

she had no fear; and her self-possession returned.

"He said I was to sound you with a view to--what you will understand,

if you care to," continued Winterborne, in a low voice. Having been

put on this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in a

hurry.

They had been children together, and there was between them that

familiarity as to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can

give. "You know, Giles," she answered, speaking in a very practical

tone, "that that is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous

position at present, and I cannot say anything to the point about such

things as those."

"No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was

looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not

been imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him

thus. For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which,

after all, should not have been unexpected. She before him was not the

girl Grace Melbury whom he used to know. Of course, he might easily

have prefigured as much; but it had never occurred to him. She was a

woman who had been married; she had moved on; and without having lost

her girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable

change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him

into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into

close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the

brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met

him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too

cursory a kind for insight.

Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been

when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as

far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it

was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of

more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the

original Grace had been capable of. He could not at first decide

whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But upon the whole the

novelty attracted him.