He said nothing, but took the gig round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside.

Winterborne then returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in themselves.

The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake.

Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who had lived and died there.
No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had brought her home.

Still, he was a little surprised that her father's eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an anticlimax as this.
He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of the timber-merchant's roof.