Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in
truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did
not know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would
arise out of Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of
temper and nervous irritation to which he was subject, something
possibly that would bring her much more misery than accompanied
her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three
o'clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which
she imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees
and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the
outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her
slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her
and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men
were clearing the undergrowth.
Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would
not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the
opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled
as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which,
since her father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's
return with his tidings.
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