Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry

could boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long,

low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide,

red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace

had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the

front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he

was there.

She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing

what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having

gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the

Advertisement..

well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and

steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters

advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last time that

she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at

the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months'

roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How

could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present

circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared

she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from

Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed

them till confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact,

at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for

the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they

drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had been

quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt

humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for

honestly on the nail.

He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all

his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which

had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.

But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result

of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite

of it--a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront

everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her

lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought

her out of the house as soon as he could.

"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all

well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I'll order a tea

there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not

good enough for you."




Most Popular