Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

31. CHAPTER XXXI. (continued)

If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.

"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he stirred the embers with a brand.

"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. "However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more practical matter--how to make the best of things as they are. I am thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the woman Charmond. I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. 'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands--not he. While she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow--poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her character before she came to Hintock?"

"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. "One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress."

"Hey?" But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?"

"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north, twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays."

"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable tribe."