The Woodlanders

The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for

long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it

were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted,

and coated with a film of dust. After reading it he looked up.

"You sha'n't go," said he.

"I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not know what you

would say."

"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a

respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I'll

oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint myself to keep

you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall

with my consent."

There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her

husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next

day, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him.

Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of her

room.

The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending,

hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke

almost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was

the hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return

again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on

the most kindly terms if he would only keep away.

The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives,

in great part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale

and anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all

their thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and

she began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he had

abandoned the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it was

formed. All on a sudden, some person who had just come from Sherton

entered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home

to Hintock. He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex

Hotel.

Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was

announced.

"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a very bad

matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is

gone away from him to Switzerland, so that Chapter of his life is

probably over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should

not say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock

without a blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock

best, why, there's the empty wing of the house as it was before."