He added a postscript: "I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.
Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this."
The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in
forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence.
While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested;
to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or rather
madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected
vitality of that fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing
the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same
perversity which had led her to make difficulties about marrying
Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor
Winterborne.
If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of
her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her
drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging
education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that
day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field
opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but
she read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and
going an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay
in her direction.
Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the
evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in
train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won
again--how could she look him in the face if he should see them
estranged thus?
It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in
the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--made of peeled
oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as refuse after
barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around
her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which,
even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she
had expected Giles to call--to inquire how she had got home, or
something or other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her
by going athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him
as she sat.
A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a
letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton,
and had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had
arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at
Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might contain--particularly
whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne from her father,
like her own of the morning.