roach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing.
Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am
astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said."

Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber.
"Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in the face until
he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him--what
you have told me--what you saw--that he gave up his house to me."

She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a
short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her
father if he had met her husband.

"Yes," said Melbury.

"And you know all that has happened?"

"I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness--I
ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your
home?"

"No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more."

The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to
Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own
contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at
her more recent doings. "My daughter, things are bad," he rejoined.
"But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What good can you do to
Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don't
inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your
course would have been if he had not died, though I know there's no
deliberate harm in ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and
I make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you
will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame.

"But I don't wish to escape it."

"If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and hers?
Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why
should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with
sorrow to the grave?"

"If it were not for my husband--" she began, moved by his words. "But
how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man's
creature join him after what has taken place?"

"He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house."

"How do you know that, father?"

"We met him on our way here, and he told us so," said Mrs. Melbury.
"He had said something like it before. He seems very much upset
altogether."

"He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for
time and devotion to bring about his