long,
low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide,
red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace
had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the
front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he
was there.

She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing
what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having
gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the
well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and
steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters
advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last time that
she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at
the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months'
roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How
could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present
circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared
she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from
Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed
them till confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact,
at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for
the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they
drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had been
quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt
humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for
honestly on the nail.

He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all
his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which
had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.

But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result
of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite
of it--a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront
everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her
lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought
her out of the house as soon as he could.

"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all
well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I'll order a tea
there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not
good enough for you."

Her face faded i