agging down to that old level as promising a piece of
maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a palace wi'--that I've taken
so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every
day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and
her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!"

"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, decisively.

When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late;
not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence
as discomposed by these other reflections.

The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. "You used to
complain with justice when I was a girl," she said. "But I am a woman
now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something
else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.

He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is
in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped
the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too
elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated
mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where
the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and
thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of
sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,
preening themselves in the rays of the sun.

"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. "And as to Giles, use your
own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me."

"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor
I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry."

He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart
there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles,
though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not
distinctly express his views on the promise. "Very well," he said.
"But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did
you think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?"

"I liked it much."

"Different from friend Winterborne's?"

She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her
silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.

"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?"

"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if
it suited her." And with this subject