“What would you have me do?” she asked, in a low voice.
He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical matter before them. “I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond,” he said.
“Go to Mrs. Charmond—what for?” said she.
“Well—if I must speak plain, dear Grace—to ask her, appeal to her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies with her entirely to do one or the other—that I can see.”
Grace’s face had heated at her father’s words, and the very rustle of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. “I shall not think of going to her, father—of course I could not!” she answered.
“Why—don’t ’ee want to be happier than you be at present?” said Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
“I don’t wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I can bear it in silence.”
“But, my dear maid, you are too young—you don’t know what the present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a’ready! Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save ’ee a peck of woes.”
“Ah, I loved her once,” said Grace, with a broken articulation, “and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do her worst: I don’t care.”
“You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought to make the best of your position.”