"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.
"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He
was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband
just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had
treated him over-roughly in his anger. "Surely it is the most
respectable thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like this state that
you are in--neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you,
and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has
never been any scandal like it in the family before."
"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. The twilight
of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her
face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated
above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there. "Oh, I
won't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almost
hysterical.
"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily.
"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll try;" and
jumping up suddenly, she left the room.
In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have
been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick
breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined
modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such
coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her
scourgings to their exquisite extremity.
The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever
sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call from
a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree to
unwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly
breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of
light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the
turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the
progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it.
She knew the point whence the sound proceeded--the hill-top over which
travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place
at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid
along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with
open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use
exclamatory words. Then another said, "What the devil is the matter
with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's.