"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action."
Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel jealous?
was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. "You are
very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly.
"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.
He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her
offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days
before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that
she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had
ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him.
"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice.
He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical
matter before them. "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he said.
"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she.
"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to her in
the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on
things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies
with her entirely to do one or the other--that I can see."
Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle of
her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. "I shall not think of
going to her, father--of course I could not!" she answered.
"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said
Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
"I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I can
bear it in silence."
"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the present
state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a'ready! Your
husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had
not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is
poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad,
not bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save 'ee a
peck of woes."
"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation, "and
she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do
her worst: I don't care."
"You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start
with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become
the wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you
ought to make the best of your position."