While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury
appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him
by a word and a look, and went on with his examination of the
parchments. His visitor sat down.
"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What
are you going to do?"
Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had
missed availing himself of his chance of renewal.
"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you
can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon
her generosity."
"I would rather not," murmured Giles.
"But you must," said Melbury.
In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be
persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to
Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her.
Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost
to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and
Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the
divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time
all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like
one family, a keen interest was the result all round.
Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them
looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the
burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in
the house with the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs,
the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a certain hour
of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams
streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by the august
presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of his
daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost
as dignified as that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul
that had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she
did not overvalue.
South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a
reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor;
but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage,
when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a woman's lips, he had
heard it on hers.