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. Life was short, he declared;
there were slips betwixt the cup and the lip; her interest in him
should be reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the
good time came for uniting them.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was
moved in heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it
carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety.
Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this family--
beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with
the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the
then popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his
social boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded
were hardly faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding
father of hers to take courage--to get himself ready for the day
when he should be able to claim her.
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