Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the present, therefore, he simply watched.

The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought¹ almost a miraculous² change in Melbury’s nature. No man so furtive³ for the time as the ingenuous⁴ countryman who finds that his ingenuousness⁵ has been abused. Melbury’s heretofore confidential⁶ candor⁷ towards his gentlemanly son-inlaw was displaced by a feline⁸ stealth that did injnry to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without external interference; but for the first time he asked himself why this so generally should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar⁹ situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband’s neglect a far more tragical¹⁰ matter to her than it would be to one who had a large circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter’s battle still.

Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth¹¹ signs of life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at Great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller village. A few minutes before his departure, he had

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