Then she made the best of her way home without looking behind her.

Giles could draw an inference now if he chose.
There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him.

Though mentally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself, have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness.

Her feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness.
Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently.

When her step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have made up my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do." Melbury looked much surprised.
"Nonsense," he said, sharply.