"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with
indignant sorrow. "I divide you from your husband, indeed! You little
think--"
He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the
encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely
in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and
he forbore. "You had better lie down. You are tired," he said,
soothingly. "Good-night."
The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken
only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's stables. Despite
her father's advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came.
It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night. She
thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot
Winterborne.
"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to herself.
"How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is
attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas
might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show
of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a
love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly.
But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken
about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on
stumps of underwood with impunity. Had the old man been able to watch
Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and
walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not
proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and,
raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down.