At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation flowed;
and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in
which he had no share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one,
the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his
daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make
him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust
Giles's image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain.
Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, at
which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had
purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now
that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his
own course. This was what the household were actually talking of
during Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with the
clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the
groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing
mistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might fell,
top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber whatever in her
wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the matter. But, name it all!
I wouldn't do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this
good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the
place, and stayed here all the year round."
"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock,
that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. Melbury.
When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble
pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had
latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived a
memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower than
they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces
of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that
it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and
old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than
when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little
things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they
had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence.
Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she
had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the
brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had taken
especial care to keep it from being cleaned off.