The Woodlanders

"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began. "I said

first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;' next, 'it

is a friend!'"

He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the

question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He

decided in the negative.

"You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need not ask." The fact

was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of exaltation,

which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more

than his bare presence.

"Why need you not ask?"

"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount."

She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles

Winterborne?"

"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon;

I didn't mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?"

"Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child,

when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late

husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell into such

an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her

niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air

before them.

"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much

longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going

abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with her."

Giles's features stiffened a little at the news. "Indeed; what for?

But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!" he cried to a

swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of

Creedle his man. "Go on filling in there till I come back."

"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming."

"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on

together--"Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--a

desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and

Mery, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to do

it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal at

large. "My notion is that Mery's style will suit her best, because he

writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said,

musingly.