"Oh yes--we will--with all my heart!"
Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand
mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather
covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to
women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty said, "I should
like to pray for his soul."
"So should I," said her companion. "But we must not."
"Why? Nobody would know."
Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense
of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender
voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that
a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more
numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of
whom Grace recognized as her father.
She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such
light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were
standing there.
"I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged
manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. "What has come
upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing.
Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am
astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said."
Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber.
"Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in the face until
he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him--what
you have told me--what you saw--that he gave up his house to me."
She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a
short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her
father if he had met her husband.
"Yes," said Melbury.
"And you know all that has happened?"
"I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness--I
ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your
home?"
"No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more."
The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to
Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own
contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at
her more recent doings. "My daughter, things are bad," he rejoined.
"But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What good can you do to
Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don't
inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your
course would have been if he had not died, though I know there's no
deliberate harm in ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and
I make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you
will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame.