At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in heart.

The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety.
Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this family--beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers to take courage--to get himself ready for the day when he should be able to claim her.
The old times came back to him in dim procession.

How he had been snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances! Well, he could not believe it.

Surely the adamantine barrier of marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence to custom.

Yet a new law might do anything.