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Each knew the probable purpose of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his dismissal.
Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Marty's little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke. "Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?" she asked. "Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty. "Oh," said Mrs.
"You have got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with almost visible effect. "Yes," said Fitzpiers. "And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a view to marriage of course that is what you mean?" "Yes," said the young man.
She felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for the previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the afternoon's proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an engagement between herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers. This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer days of that year.
They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air being still, Winterborne heard her say "Stop; tell that man to call the doctor Mr. Fitzpiers and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt more seriously than I thought." Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the doctor's at once.
"I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she replied. "And I can say it here." "No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the house, come as far as the porch." Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. "I have merely a request or petition to make," she said.
Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by some chance passer, and carried home, some of her clothes being left behind in the difficulty of getting her free.
They had stopped at a way-side inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the subject by saying, "I should like very much to know who that young lady was." "What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow falls on?" "Ha! ha! True." "You have no wife, sir?"
There was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly. But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on stumps of underwood with impunity.
"But there's something wrong eh?" he asked, eying her narrowly, and bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss miscarried. "What is it?" he said, more seriously for this little defeat. She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I must go in." "Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. "Tell me at once, I say."
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