woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This
track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and
roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of
boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees
behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his
men were clearing the undergrowth.

Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not
have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the opposite
glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace
herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her
father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's return with his
tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to
her.

She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of
the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. "I am
only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic
intonation.

"I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may perhaps have
gone on farther."

"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said, turning her
large tender eyes anxiously upon him. "Did he tell you what for?"

Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her
father had visited him the evening before, and that their old
friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.

"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she cried.
And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling
each other's souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of
these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them,
craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan
life of her father which in the best probable succession of events
would shortly be denied her.

At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was
shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings.
While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their
mutual embarrassment at each other's presence, they beheld approaching
the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white
veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and
courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs.
Charmond.

On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the
fret