The Woodlanders

"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.

"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He

was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband

just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had

treated him over-roughly in his anger. "Surely it is the most

respectable thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like this state that

you are in--neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you,

and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has

never been any scandal like it in the family before."

"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. The twilight

of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her

face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated

above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there. "Oh, I

won't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almost

hysterical.

"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily.

"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll try;" and

jumping up suddenly, she left the room.

In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have

been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick

breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined

modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such

coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her

scourgings to their exquisite extremity.

The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever

sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call from

a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree to

unwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly

breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of

light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the

turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the

progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it.

She knew the point whence the sound proceeded--the hill-top over which

travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place

at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid

along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with

open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use

exclamatory words. Then another said, "What the devil is the matter

with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's.