Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.

"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.

"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose you talk over
my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?"

"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his
eyes. "And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear
old Hintock, AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the
Continent. But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't
you, Giles?"

"It is well enough in