"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began. "I said
first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;' next, 'it
is a friend!'"
He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the
question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He
decided in the negative.
"You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need not ask." The fact
was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of exaltation,
which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more
than his bare presence.
"Why need you not ask?"
"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount."
She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles
Winterborne?"
"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon;
I didn't mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?"
"Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child,
when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late
husband bought the property. She is SO nice!" And Grace fell into such
an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her
niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air
before them.
"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much
longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going
abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with her."
Giles's features stiffened a little at the news. "Indeed; what for?
But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!" he cried to a
swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of
Creedle his man. "Go on filling in there till I come back."
"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming."
"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on
together--"Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--a
desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and
Mery, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to do
it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal at
large. "My notion is that Mery's style will suit her best, because he
writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said,
musingly.