Chapter 32 - Page 2

person, but a tragic vision that travelled with him like an
envelope. Through this vision the incidents of the moment but
gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through
the high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an
hour, an hour and a half, two hours. He began to look pale and
ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked him to have a glass
of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no. Is she almost
ready?"

"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler. "She will
soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here."

"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury.

"Oh no," said the other. "You see you came so very early."

At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not
in her private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he
heard her coming from the front staircase, and she entered where
he stood.

At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and
more. She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de
trente ans, though she was really not more than seven or eight and
twenty. There being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl
thrown loosely round her shoulders, and obviously without the
least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other errand than
timber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had
not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment
living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumor, though not
in respect of the weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be
told, caused her grave misgivings.

"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that
were to be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I
believe."

"Yes," said Melbury.

"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just
now!"

She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous
person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of
the perfect social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so
charming," were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them
sound absurdly unreal.

"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair,
and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began:
"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least
to me--than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my
manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set
'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care."

Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess
his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact
with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his