At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his
opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him
like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly
abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why
Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have
opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could
hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her
own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the
misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as
well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when
the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose
and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words
Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes
they were gone.
"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with
her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant evening,
and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding
about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must
be no mixing in with your people below. I can't stand it, and that's
the truth."
She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for
those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he
had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented in a
moment.
"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our
goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere."
"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so."
"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing
whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn't help
myself at all."
She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came
unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best."
Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old
rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to
discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an
extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific
and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, and therefore in a degree
only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the
strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as
soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury
Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of
hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which
Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But
now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage,
Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own
divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old
Jones, whom they had so long despised.