ho had been unfortunate in his worldly
transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like
Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing

"As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing."

It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's
murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.

When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview
between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her
sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care
for. He stood still.

"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly.

"Yes, father," she murmured.

"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm
of pitiful affection.

"Oh no--not especially. He has a great many patients to see this
afternoon."

Melbury came quite close. "Grace, what's the use of talking like that,
when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden,
child."

He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This
apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had
rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of
conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond unguibus et
rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her
husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air.

She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. "You
know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something threatening
mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I
don't see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this
quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters."

"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action."

Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel jealous?
was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. "You are
very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly.

"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.

He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her
offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days
before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that
she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had
ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him.

"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice.

He recalled his