This track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men were clearing the undergrowth.
Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's return with his tidings.

Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to her.
She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly.

"I am only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic intonation.
"I was looking for him too," said Giles.

"I think he may perhaps have gone on farther." "Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles ?" she said, turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him.

"Did he tell you what for ?" Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her father had visited him the evening before, and that their old friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.
"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she cried.
And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each other's souls.