A few minutes before his departure, he had casually heard Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was going to walk in the wood.

Melbury entered the building and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs.Charmond, then Mr.Fitzpiers.
The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two; he fancied that more than once their eyes met.

At the end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Charmond's from the opposite side, and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek.

The cheek warmed up to a richer tone.
This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected.

If she had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion--and women of the world do not change color for nothing--was a threatening development.