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Updated: June 13, 2025
And she looked at the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and slender fingers that had been gifts from Fitzpiers. Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the above-described pride of life easily to be understood, and possibly excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married well she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr. Winterborne!"
The conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying power being left in Darling yet.
As for Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the social hope of the family. "You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her father, in continuation of the subject. Despite her feeling she assented to this.
He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr. Winterborne!" Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne! What, have you forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming smile.
Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of an advanced school of painting to that of the Pacific Islander. Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena.
Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of their contemplation.
Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time: "Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood a very attractive girl with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her gloves?" Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessaries.
Somehow, in the broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentleman seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had invested his personality and pursuits in the hours of darkness, and as Grace's dressing proceeded he faded from her mind. Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father's favor, was rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury's behavior.
He added to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for him at last.
"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond. "Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses." "Lost his houses? How came he to do that?" "The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very good claim. That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that the match was broke off."
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