Winterborne then returned to the door with the intention of
entering the house.

The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in
themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it
irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to make them look
wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining
also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through
a brake. Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so
much had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since
he last had set eyes on her.

Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,
mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters
carved in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of
householders who had lived and died there.

No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the
family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that
he had brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that
her father's eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted
in such an anticlimax as this.

He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking
back when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last
glimpse of the timber-merchant's roof. He hazarded guesses as to
what Grace was saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some
self-derision, "nothing about me!" He looked also in the other
direction, and saw against the sky the thatched hip and solitary
chimney of Marty's cottage, and thought of her too, struggling