Chapter 40 - Page 2

troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now
continued for long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as
if he thought it were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside
him, mostly untasted, and coated with a film of dust. After
reading it he looked up.

"You sha'n't go," said he.

"I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not know what
you would say."

"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a
respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that
I'll oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint
myself to keep you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go
abroad you never shall with my consent."

There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to
her husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and
the next day, and the evening on which he had requested her to
meet him. Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four
walls of her room.

The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be
impending, hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury
household. They spoke almost in whispers, and wondered what
Fitzpiers would do next. It was the hope of every one that,
finding she did not arrive, he would return again to France; and
as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on the most kindly
terms if he would only keep away.

The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her
relatives, in great part, likewise. When they met the next
morning they were pale and anxious, though neither speaking of the
subject which occupied all their thoughts. The day passed as
quietly as the previous ones, and she began to think that in the
rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned the idea of getting her
to join him as quickly as it was formed. All on a sudden, some
person who had just come from Sherton entered the house with the
news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock. He had
been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex Hotel.

Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was
announced.

"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a
very bad matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame,
I hear, is gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of
his life is probably over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I
think you should not say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very
well live at Hintock without a blow to his pride; but if he can
bear that, and likes Hintock best, why, there's the empty wing of
the house as it was before."

"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.

"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning.
He was,