The inevitable change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him into a momentary fixity.

The truth was that he had never come into close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too cursory a kind for insight.
Winterborne had advanced, too.

He could criticise her.

Times had been when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity.

This thing was sure: it was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the original Grace had been capable of.