"But, Miss Melbury, I saw him."
"No," said Grace. "It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is
nothing to me."
CHAPTER XX.
The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the
woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque
body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast
green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked
there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden
dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface
all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in
such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked
all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the night-jar,
however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music
from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was not seen
complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous
little stars staring through the leaves.
Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as
the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of
the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of
indistinctness.
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