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."

"I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you
had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods
like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than
she."

"Why?" said her amazed father.

"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles.
I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools
you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had
stayed at home I should have married--" She closed up her mouth
suddenly and was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying.

Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like to have grown up
as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more chance of
seeing good l