me if I had not seen something like it
done elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully, after a
while.

"By whom?"

"Don't ask it."

She scanned him narrowly. "I know quite well enough," she returned,
indifferently. "It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond.
Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles--tell me all
you know about that--please do, Giles! But no--I won't hear it. Let
the subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father."

They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued
along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate
that entered it.

CHAPTER XXIX.

She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by
nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours.
A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at
right angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverse
ride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown tucked up high through
her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head--in the act of pulling down
boughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great
rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the same
pleasant meal.

Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two. By an automatic
chain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene
described by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that
narrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so obviously sound and
strong. Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her
reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim.
"Good-evening, Susan," she said.

"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack).

"Mrs. Fitzpiers."

"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile.

Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth, Suke.
That accounts for the toothache."

"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the
Lord" (crack).

"Nor the loss of one, either?"

"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited the
whole double row, full up and unimpaired.

"You have never had one drawn?"

"Never."

"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an
altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on.

As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of time,
Grace was almost startled to find how little she