forgiveness," said her husband.
"That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?"

"Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him
absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added.

This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as
it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was
sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different
reason for avoiding her. She made no further objections to
accompanying her parents, taking them into the inner room to give
Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or three things that
belonged to her. While she was doing this the two women came who had
been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle.

"Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a man should, Mr.
Melbury," he said. "I ha'n't seen him since Thursday se'night, and
have wondered for days and days where he's been keeping. There was I
expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against
the making, and here was he-- Well, I've knowed him from table-high; I
knowed his father--used to bide about upon two sticks in the sun afore
he died!--and now I've seen the end of the family, which we can ill
afford to lose, wi' such a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've
got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards 'a
b'lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh for he!"

They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time
Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just
in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected
in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death,
pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Winterborne was
gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of him; those young trees,
so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly
when he said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very
moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them
with his subtle hand.

"One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back
to the house," said Melbury at last--"the death of Mrs. Charmond."

"Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, "he told
me so."

"Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles's. She
was shot--by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The
unfortunate man shot himself afterwards. He was th