clare them--for her dear sake.

Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous
embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter
from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser
strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremely
glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors,
he went on:

"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being
out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in
this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot
rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he
may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my
heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do,
then, Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is
over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive
me and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this,
my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have
still further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I
cannot rest in peace."

He added a postscript:

"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.
Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this."

The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in
forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence.
While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested;
to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or rather
madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected
vitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing
the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same
perversity which had led her to make difficulties about marrying
Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor
Winterborne.

If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of
her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her
drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging
education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that
day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field
opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but
she read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and
going an air of