“Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off; have your own way.”
“But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace you?”
Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the garden. Her father followed her.
“It is that Giles Winterborne!” he said, with an upbraiding gaze at her.
“No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,” she said, troubled to the verge of despair. “It is not Giles, it is Mr. Fitzpiers.”
“You’ve had a tiff—a lovers’ tiff—that’s all, I suppose!”
“It is some woman—”
“Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don’t tell me. Now do you bide here. I’ll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of his house but a minute by-gone.”
He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the trees were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them.
His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he drew near.