e lady, she didn't say a word about it; though 'twould have made
good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially
as wit ran short among us sometimes."

"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head
over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than
ever. "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been accustomed to
servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could
she stand our ways?"

"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere.
They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor
men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em, only to their own
race."

"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.

CHAPTER XI.

"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next morning
at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.

But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's suit at
this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote--was,
indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was
approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would have
to be met.

But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what
an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his
daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for
several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry
Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant,
apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.

"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's bound to
accept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. "Bless ye,
she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles's way
of living, which he'll improve with what money she'll have from you.
'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel
uncomfortable at first. Why, when I saw Hintock the first time I
thought I never could like it. But things gradually get familiar, and
stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of the
owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a
while."

"Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I KNOW Grace will gradually sink
down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and
feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the
thought of dr