But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read

its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge

of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the

drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it

here and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that

way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the

woodland.

The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had often

felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now

after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's communication.

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Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might

suddenly end--might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The

thought took away from her all her former reticence, and made her

action bold. She started from her seat. If the little breach,

quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed

up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the

orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was

diminishing to a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the

brown floor.

Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter had

no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood

after its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much

reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his

grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock,

written a few hours later than Melbury's to his daughter. It announced

failure.

Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the

moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During

his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally

heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme of justice to

Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest

possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young

man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the

belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's

conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap

the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the chapter.

Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl

under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the

almost tragical information engendered.




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