"No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!"
"I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many times,
that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking with. The
woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with a polished-up
fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she's hobbing and
nobbing with a homely blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for
long, or at least your children sha'n't. You shall have somebody to
walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I--please God you shall!"
"But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't mind at all.
I don't wish for more honor than I already have!"
"A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," according to
Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so
than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace,
she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to
unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was
conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the
social hope of the family.
"You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her
father, in continuation of the subject.
Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been
without its weight upon her.
"Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, "if it costs
me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a
young woman's niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry
well."
He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze,
which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.
She looked calmly at him. "And how about Mr. Winterborne?" she asked.
"I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question
of keeping faith."
The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment. "I don't know--I don't
know," he said. "'Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there's no hurry.
We'll wait and see how he gets on."
That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment
behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the
bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr.
Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an
iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers. The door of
the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.