op, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber whatever in her
wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the matter. But, name it all!
I wouldn't do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this
good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the
place, and stayed here all the year round."

"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock,
that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. Melbury.

When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble
pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had
latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived a
memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower than
they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces
of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that
it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and
old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than
when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little
things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they
had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence.
Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she
had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the
brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had taken
especial care to keep it from being cleaned off.

Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious
edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the
morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife,
to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared
to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than her
momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up
longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises
that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking
towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she
used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim
tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this
meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary
point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before
its beams. From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of a
house on the hill-side