It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning,

passing through the door and gate while her father was in the

spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid

passing Winterborne's house. The morning sun was shining flat upon its

white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately

visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. She

could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the charred

spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground

beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe

her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out "lose" and

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inserted "keep" in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home

without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he

chose.

There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to

more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she

had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune

those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with

her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous

revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained

and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful

time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself,

have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her

feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall

had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness.

Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her

step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have made up

my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the

present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do."

Melbury looked much surprised.

"Nonsense," he said, sharply. "You don't know what you are talking

about. Look here."

He handed across to her the letter received from Giles.

She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the

wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and

there was nothing to do but to acquiesce.

It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough,

had NOT perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the

front of South's late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way,

a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet.

He went up to her and said, "Marty, why did you write that on my wall

last night? It WAS you, you know."




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