Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he
was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of
purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present,
as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would
serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.

His first notion--acquired from the mere sight of her without
converse--that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a
timber-merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that
he had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with
such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and
mutual explorations of the world of thought. Since he could not call
at her father's, having no practical views, cursory encounters in the
lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from church, or in passing
her dwelling, were what the acquaintance would have to feed on.

Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in
the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration,
frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy,
in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs
budded. There never was a particular moment at which it could be said
they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between
two who in the winter had been strangers.

Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had
long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night.
The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The
flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they
had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them
the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door
people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people
replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.