Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he
alone would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be
brought upon her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain
under his roof he had faced the numerous inconveniences involved
in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpiers. There was
no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their
natural course, she would have accepted Winterborne, and realized
his old dream of restitution to that young man's family.
That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature
for a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and
astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led it had
scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be
faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond's
position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed
Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from
that quarter. What could he and his simple Grace do to
countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated
beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with every apparatus for
victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as
inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of
modern warfare.
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