In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the wall and

ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their

presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to

welcome her.

The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some

shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in

rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to

most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of

towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all

round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But

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that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her

father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles

without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig

round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who

particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation

to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then

returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.

The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in

themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated

Grace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and

fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose

hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was

surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and

progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.

Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,

mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved

in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who had

lived and died there.

No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family;

they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had

brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father's

eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an

anticlimax as this.

He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back

when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of

the timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was

saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision,

"nothing about me!" He looked also in the other direction, and saw

against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty's

cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that

humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers.




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