such a position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by
her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return. "If I
had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this
might not have happened," she thought. She deplored less the fact than
the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein.

Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and
reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last
came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of the late
expenses of her clothes, board, and education.

"I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn," she
said, looking up sorrily.

"I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea
of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they,
never mind. You'll yield a better return."

"Don't think of me like that!" she begged. "A mere chattel."

"A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that's in your line I don't
forbid it, even if it tells against me," he said, good-humoredly. And
he looked her proudly up and down.

A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was
ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, "So we
shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear,
Maister Melbury. Yes, she's going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for
the rest of the winter months; and be-chok'd if I don't wish I could do
the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue."

When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter
and said, "So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, and your chance of
keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!"

Grace said nothing.

"Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's affair has done
this. Oh yes, 'tis. So let me say one word. Promise me that you will
not meet him again without my knowledge."

"I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with it."

"So much the better. I don't like the look of this at all. And I say
it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to
you. For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been,
bear the roughness of a life with him?"

She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a
sense of the intractability of circumstances.

At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a
conversation abo