You should look more into matters." "I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action." Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel jealous?
was she not indignant?
but a natural delicacy restrained him.

"You are very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly.
"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.
He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him.
"What would you have me do ?" she asked, in a low voice.
He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical matter before them.

"I would have you go to Mrs.Charmond," he said.
"Go to Mrs.Charmond--what for ?" said she.
"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband.

It lies with her entirely to do one or the other--that I can see." Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur.

"I shall not think of going to her, father--of course I could not!" she answered.
"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present ?" said Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
"I don't wish to be more humiliated.