into the
orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was
diminishing to a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the
brown floor.

Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter had
no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood
after its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much
reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his
grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock,
written a few hours later than Melbury's to his daughter. It announced
failure.

Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the
moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During
his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally
heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme of justice to
Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest
possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young
man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the
belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's
conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap
the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the
chapter.

Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl
under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the
almost tragical information engendered.

To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him, after
all. There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for
tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She
could not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now
terrible. How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this
thing could be done?

It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he
turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in
an instant that she did not know the blighting news.

"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch
reproach. "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?"

"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior
in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too
chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she
resolved to