“I am glad we are friends again anyhow,” she said, smiling through her tears. “Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for encouraging you a little, but my father is so impatient, you know, as his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.”
To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so trust her father’s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. “We may have been wrong,” he began, almost fearfully, “in supposing that it can all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after all—”
Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. “Oh, Giles,” she said, grasping his arm, “you have heard something! What—cannot my father conclude it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don’t deceive me. What terrible position am I in?”
He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust in his honor absolutely disabled him. “I cannot inform you,” he murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. “Your father will soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.”
Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, “I will take you, at any rate, into the drive.”
Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and misgiving. It was only a few minutes’ walk to where the drive ran, and they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them cry, “Take out that arm!”
For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and hoarsely,
“Take out that arm!”
It was Melbury’s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now came up to them. Grace’s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her hearing the second command. “I don’t blame you—I don’t blame you,” he said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. “But you two must walk together no more—I have been surprised—I have been cruelly deceived—Giles, don’t say anything to me; but go away!”
He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then. When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the room he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him.