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. The
mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was
wellnigh conclusive as far as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved
yet to watch.

He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day
something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of
vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded
linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been descending at
leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden
colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded
mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier, and
curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs.
Charmond's existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived
with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and
attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely
country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years,
start from Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change
from his last autumn's habits lay in his abandonment of night
study--his lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old.