The Woodlanders - Page 246/314

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 determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay

in her direction.

Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the

evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in

train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won

again--how could she look him in the face if he should see them

estranged thus?

It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in

the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--made of peeled

oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as refuse after

barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around

her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which,

even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she

had expected Giles to call--to inquire how she had got home, or

something or other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her

by going athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him

as she sat.

A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a

letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton,

and had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had

arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at

Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might contain--particularly

whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne from her father,

like her own of the morning.