 15 When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked thoughtfully about the premises. On South's own account he was genuinely sorry, and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved, in that this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal of Giles, as to be thrilled of his daughter. He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles's second trouble, when the needful one, inflicted by himself, was all that the proper order of events demanded. I told Giles's father, when he came to those houses, not to spend too much money on lifehold property, held neither for his own life nor his sons, he exclaimed, but he wouldn't listen to me, and now Giles has to suffer for it. "'Poor Giles,' murmured Grace. "'Now, Grace, between us two it is very, very remarkable. It is almost as if I had foreseen this, and I am thankful for your escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already we could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now, so I say be thankful. I'll do all I can for him as a friend, but as a pretender to the position of my son-in-law that can never be thought of more.' And yet, at that very moment, the impractic ability to which poor winter-born suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to a warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning him. He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then, against one side of the case in which it swung, as the muffled drum to his worldly march. Looking out of the window he could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creadle's occupation of manuring the garden, owing obviously to a conviction that they might not be living there long enough to profit by next season's crop. He looked at the leases again, and the letter attached. There was no doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions of his holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict law, but might not the intention be considered by the land-holder when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded. His heart sank within him, when he perceived that despite all the legal reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the matter amounted to this. That it depended upon the mere caprice, good or ill, of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way, whether he was to possess his houses for life or no. While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him by a word and a look, and he went on with his examination of the parchments. His visitor sat down. Giles, he said, this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What are you going to do? Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had missed evailing himself of his chance of renewal. What a misfortune! Why was it neglected? Well, the best thing you can do was write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon her generosity. And I would rather not. More, more, Giles. But you must," said Melbury. In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her. Melbury, feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home, and Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being well nigh like one family, a keen interest was the result all round. Everybody thought of Giles. Nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them looked in upon her, during these moonlight nights which preceded the burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in the house with the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for convenience, and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams streamed across the still profile of south, sublimed by the august presence of death, and onward a few feet further upon the face of his daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of her oppose almost as dignified as that of her companion, the repose of a guileless soul that had nothing more left on earth to lose except a life which she did not overvalue. South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor, but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage, when, if he had ever heard an affronted tone on a woman's lips, he had heard it on hers. The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had assembled in the spar-house, and Winterborne, who, when not busy on his own account, would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning, and meet the postman at the end of one of the green rides through the hazel-cops, in the straight stretch of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very anxious, more anxious than her father, more perhaps than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the spar-house, on some pretext or other, almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply. Fitzpiers, too, though he did not personally appear, was much interested, and not altogether easy in his mind, for he had been informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that if the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone on complaining, but might have lived for twenty years. Eleven times Winterborne had gone to that corner of the ride, and looked up its long, straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn. But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly, he brought nothing for giles. On the twelfth day the man of Missives, while yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He took it to the spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there gathered around him while he read, Grace looking in at the door. The letter was not for Mrs. Charmant herself, but her agent at Sherton. Winterborne glanced over it and looked up. It's all over. He said, Ah! said they all together. Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmant sees no reason for disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she contemplates pulling the houses down. He said quietly, Only think of that, said several. Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, that then let her pull him down, and be damned to her. Winterborne looked at him with the face of seven sorrows, saying, Ah, it was that spirit that lost him for ye master. Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace in the event of this negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware of the fact that her father could have settled upon her affortune sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as making her his wife, and sank into silence fortwith. Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends. The country man who was obliged to judge the time of day from changes in external nature sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the landscape which are never discerned by him who hears the regular chime of a clock, because they were never in request. In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which, when accompanied by a voice, goes unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved one's moods and meanings. This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbours after his stroke of ill luck. He held his tongue, and they observed him, and knew that he was discomposed. Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than anyone else except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the old fashion, Grace's father would have alluded to his disapproval of the alliance every day with the greatest frankness, but to speak any further on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now. He hoped that Giles would have his own accord make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing passed and done with. And for though Giles had, in a measure acquiesced, in the wish of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose to work upon Grace, and hence, when Melbury saw the young man approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity exactly balanced in his eye, till he could see whether Giles's manner was presumptive or not. His manner was that of a man who abandoned old claims. I am glad to meet you, Mr. Melbury, he said, in a low voice, whose quality he endeavoured to make as practical as possible. I am afraid I shall not be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care to sell her, I should like, if you don't object, to give her to Miss Melbury. The horse is very quiet, and will be quite safe for her. Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. You shan't hurt your pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but I'll pay you what you gave her, and any expense you may have been put to for her keep. He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. There were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant pressed winter-born to enter, Grace being out of the way. Up round the settled Giles, said the timber-merchant as soon as they were within, I should like to have a serious talk with you. Thereupon he put the case to winter-born frankly, and in quite a friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when he was in difficulty, but he really did not see how winter-born could marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to. Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation, but from a momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind from her own lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would seek to bring about a meeting with her. In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. He took up the candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he turned, the light flickered on the white-wash-rough case of the front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal which he read as follows. "'Oh, Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place, and therefore, Giles, you lose your Grace.' Giles went indoors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far more than curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that they were turning out to be true. Try to see Grace as he might." Day decided the question for him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in such a position as to make him share to the full Melbury's view of his own and his daughter's promise, made some years before, to wish that it should be considered as cancelled and Day themselves quite released from any obligation on account of it. Everything fastened up this their plenary absolution. He determined to get it out of his hands and have done with it. To which end he went off to Melbury's at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired, and he crept up to the house, thrust a note under the door, and stole away as silently as he had come. Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had read the letter his relief was great. Very honourable of Giles, very honourable. He kept saying to himself, I shall not forget him, now to keep her up to her own true level. It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, passing through the door and gate while her father was in the spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid passing the winter-borne's house. The morning sun was shining flat upon its white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back. The charred spar-gad, with which the lines had been written, lay on the ground, beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that winter-borne would observe her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out loose, and asserted keep in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he chose. There could not be the least out that gentle Grace was warming to more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles winter-borne, than ever she had done whilst he was her promised lover, that since his misfortune those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained and tilled into fariness of view as compared with her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself, have declined winter-borne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness. Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her stepmother had left the room she said to her father, I have made up my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the present at any rate, till I see further with what I ought to do. The Melbury looked much surprised. The nonsense, he said sharply. You don't know what you were talking about. Look here. He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. She read it and said no more. Could he have seen her right on the wall? She did not know. If it seemed, would have its way, and there was nothing to do but to acquiesce. It was a few hours after this that winter-borne, who curiously enough had not perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the front of South's late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her doorway, a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet. He went up to her and said, Marty, why did you write that on my wall last night? It was you, you know. Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr. Winterborne, but when I was going to rub it out, you came, and I was obliged to run off. Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your predictions can't be worth much. I have not altered it. But you have. No. It is altered. Go and see. She went and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he would keep his Grace. Marty came back surprised. Well, I never, she said. Who could have made such a nonsense of it? Who, indeed, said he. I have rubbed it all out as the point of it is quite gone. You'd no business to rub it out, I didn't tell you to. I meant to let it stay a little longer. Some idle boy did it, no doubt, she murmured. As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from his mind. From this day of his life onward, for a considerable time, Winterborne, though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the background of human life and action thereabout, a feat not particularly difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her right, made no further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded and lost. CHAPTER XVI Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less pretension both as to architecture and as to magnitude than the timber merchants. The latter had no doubt been once the menorial residents appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption, with others of its kind, into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every reason to believe, at least so the Parsons said, that the owners of the Little Manor had been Melbury's own ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the time of the Civil Wars. Dr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front rooms into the kitchen-quarter, whence they administered to his wants, and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome addition to their income. The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut into wedge-shape, was a door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house-front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the path were first a bed of gooseberry bushes, next of currants, next of raspberry, next of strawberry, next of old-fashioned flowers, at the corners opposite the porch, being spheres of box resembling a pair of school-globes. Over the roof of the house could be seen the orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the crest of the hill. Next at the garden-door, invisible from the power-window, was a swing-gate leading into a field, a course which there ran a foot-path. The swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon before the paint was dry, while the gnats were still drying thereon, the surgeon was standing in a sitting-room, abstractedly looking out at the different pedestrians, who passed and repass along that route. Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the character of each of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat amusing manner by his or her method of handling the gate. As regarded the men, there was not much variety. They gave the gate a kick and pass through. The women were more contrasting. To them the sticky woodwork was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as the case might be. The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman, with her skirts tucked up, and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving it a supplementary push with her shoulder. When the white imprint drew from her, an exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the green bank, sat down, and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the while. Ha! Ha! Last a doctor. The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon recognized the daughter of his late patient. The woodman, South. Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly reminded him that he had ordered a felling of a tree, which had caused her parents death and winter-born's losses. She walked unthought but not recklessly, but her preoccupation led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement with an almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original thoughts. Thus she went on her way. Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as if she had been bred in the country. She seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it, even with the tip of her love, was the Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to tragic self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was unable to find the right one. Glancing again out of the window he saw that he was too late. When come up she stopped, looked at the gate, picked up a little stick, and, using it as a bayonet, pushed open the obstacle without touching it at all. He steadily watched her as she passed out of sight, recognizing her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before, and been unable to identify. Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with a crude drasticity. The contrast, often by this, suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of seeing her, but he now went a little further with them, and considered that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot, she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody staying at Hintock House. Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much, at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky. Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man, except by Fitz, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained in his thoughts. He might have followed her, but he was not constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However, when he went out for a ramble just before dusk, he insensibly took the direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that day, and she had walked to the brow of the hill whence the house could be seen, returning by another route. Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the Manor House. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had gone away, and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much, and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward. Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in his position, he was far from having assumed a dignity of being driven, his rounds by a servant in a braum that flashed the sunlight like a mirror. His way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove himself, hitching the rain of the horse to the gateposts, Shutterhawk, or garden-pailing of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to little boys to hold the animal during his stay, and pennies which were well-earned, when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind that wore out the patience of the little boys. On this account of travelling alone the night journeys which Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent perversity in nature, ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skillful with the rains, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates. The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in question, when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of Winterborne walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life. Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually could get, and he had once pulled up and asked him if he would like a drive through the wood that fine night. Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but said that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Griffith's piers. They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of them alike in another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal bough, they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles, large diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at Roost, and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he. Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time. Is there a young lady staying in this neighbourhood, a very attractive girl, with a little white boa around her neck and white fur round her gloves? Winterborne, of course, knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught a doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories, with a rarity grimness partly in his character, partly induced by the circumstances. He evaded an answer by saying, I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day, perhaps it was she. Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking over the hedge. It might have been, he said, if she is quite a gentle woman, the one I mean, if she cannot be a permanent resident in Hintock or I should have seen her before, nor does she look like one. Is she not staying at Hintock House? No, it is closed. Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, our farm houses. Oh, no, you mistake, she was a different sort of girl altogether. As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophised the night in continuation. She moved upon this earth the shape of brightness, a power that from its objects scarcely drew, one impulse of her being in her lightness, most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, which wanders through the waist-air's pathless blue to nourish some far desert she did seem, beside me gathering beauty as she grew, like the bright shade of some immortal dream, which walks when tempests sleep the wave of life's dark stream. The consummate charm of the lion seemed to Winterborne, though he divine that there were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers. You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir? He said, with the sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention grace by name. Oh, no, I am not that Winterborne, when people living insulated as I do by the solitude of this place, get charged with a mote of fluid, like a laden jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to disperse it. Even love is a subjective thing, the essence itself of man. As that great thinker spinosa the philosopher says, ipsa hominus essentia. It is joy, accompanied by an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an oak, ash, or elm-tree indifferently. So that if any other young lady had appeared, instead of the one who did appear, I should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all. Well, it is what we call being in love down these parts, whether or no, said Winterborne. You are right enough, if you admit that I am in love with something in my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all. Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of things may I ask, sir? Did Winterborne, adopting the Socratic Aronia, with such well assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered readily? Oh, no! The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter—a bottle of bitter stuff for this and that old woman, the bitterer the better, compounded from a few simple stereotype prescriptions, occasional attendance at births where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong are the people, and a lance for an abscess now and then. Investigation and experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one has here, though I have attempted it a little. Giles did not enter into this view of the case. What he had been struck with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's manner and Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it was foreign to him. Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a wayside in for a glass of brandy and cider-hot, and when they were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the subject by saying, I should like very much to know who that young lady was. What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow falls on? Ha! True. You have no wife, sir? I have no wife and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than marry and settle in Hintock, not but that it is well for a medical man to be married, than sometimes be God, to be pleasant enough in this place, with the wind roaring round the house and the rain and the boughs beating against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the death of South. I did. I lost in more ways than one. They had reached the top of Hintock Lane, or Street, if it could be called such, where three-quarters of the roadside consisted of cops and orchard. One of the first houses to be passed was Melbury's. A light was shining from a bedroom-window facing lengthwise of the Lane. Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what was coming. He had withheld an answer to the doctor's inquiry to hinder his knowledge of Grace, but, as he thought to himself, who had gathered the wind in his fists, who had bound the waters in a garment. He could not hinder what was doomed to arrive, and he might just as well have been outspoken. As they came up to the house, Grace's figure was distinctly visible, drawing the two white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds. Why, there she is, said Fitzpiers. How does she come there? In most natural way in the world, to her home, Mr. Melbury is her father. Oh, indeed, indeed, indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of that stamp? Winterborne laughed coldly. Who won't money do anything, he said, if he had promising material to work upon, or he shouldn't a hintock girl taken early from home, and put under proper instruction, become as finished as any other young lady, if she's got brains and good looks to begin with. No reason at all why she shouldn't murmur the sergeant with reflective disappointment, and only I didn't anticipate quite that kind of origin for her. And you think an inch or two less of her now? There was a little tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke. Well, said the doctor, with recovered warmth, I am not sure that I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow, but, dammit, I'll stick up for her. She's charming, every inch of her. So she is, said Winterborne. But not to me. From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlanders, Dr. Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had on that account withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to diminish his admiration for her. CHAPTER XVII Grace's exhibition of herself in the act of pulling to the window-curtains had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the house that day. Nothing less than the illness of Grammar Oliver, a woman who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. Like others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping their bed almost as repugnant as debt itself, she had continued on foot till she had literally fell on the floor, and though she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quite a different personage from the independent Grammar of the yard and spar-house. Ill as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account would she see a doctor, in other words, fits peers. The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old woman's. On the girl's way to bed she had received a message from Grammar to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that night. Grace entered and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so that the profile of Grammar as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified by an enormous turban, which was really her petticoat wound in a wreath round her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, and approaching the sick woman said, "'I'm come, Grammar, as you wish. Do let us end for the doctor before it gets later.' "'I will not have them,' said Grammar Oliver decisively. "'Then somebody to sit up with you.' "'Can't bear it. No, I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because she has something on my mind. "'Dear Miss Grace, I took that money from the doctor after all.' "'What money?' "'The ten pounds.' Grace did not quite understand. "'The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because of a large brain. I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it at all. I have not liked to tell you that was really settled with him, because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having thought it all over more at length, I wish I hadn't done it, and it weighs upon my mind. John South's death of fear about the tree makes me think that I shall die of this. I have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I hadn't a face.' "'Why?' "'I spent some of the money, more than two pounds of it. It do worth me terribly, and I shall die of the thought of that paper I signed with my holy cross, as South died of his trouble.' "'If you ask him to burn the paper, he will, I'm sure, and think no more of it.' "'You have done it once already, Miss, but he laughed, cruel-like. Yours is such a fine brain, Grammar, who said that science couldn't afford to lose you. Besides, you've taken my money. Don't let your father know of this, please, or no account whatever.' "'No. No, I will let you have the money to return to him.' Grammar rolled her head negatively on the pillow. Even if I should be well enough to take it to him, he won't like it. Though why, he should so particularly want to look into the works of a poor old woman's headpiece like mine, when there's so many other folks about, I don't know. I know how he'll answer me. A lonely person like you, Grammar, I will say, what difference is it to you, what becomes of you, when the breath is out of your body? Oh, it do trouble me. If you only knew how he'd do Chevy me around the chimering we dreamed, you'd pity me. How I could do it, I can't think. But I'd always been reckless. If I only had anybody to plead for me.' Mrs. Melbury would, I'm sure. Ah! But you wouldn't harken to Shea, it wants a younger face than Horace to work upon such as He. Grace started with comprehension. You don't think you would do it for me, she said. Oh, wouldn't he? I couldn't go to him, Grammar, on any account. I don't know him at all. Ah! If I were the young lady, said the artful Grammar, I could save a poor old woman's skeleton from a heathen doctor, instead of a Christian grave, I would do it and be glad to. But nobody would do anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way. You are very ungrateful, Grammar, to say that. But you are ill, I know, and that's why you speak so. Now, believe me, you are not going to die yet. Remember, you told me yourself that you meant to keep him waiting many a year. Ah! One can joke when one is well, even in old age, but in sickness one's gait he falters to grief, and that which seems small looks large, and the grim far off seems near. Grace's eyes had tears in them. I don't like to go to him on such an errant, Grammar," she said brokenly, but I will, to ease your mind. It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning for the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by reason of Grammar's allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers, and hence she most illogically did that which, had the doctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motive of her journey, that is to say, she put on a woolen veil which hid all her face except an occasional spark of her eyes. Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and gruesome proceeding, no less than Grammar Oliver's own desire, led Grace to take every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the other side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air. The trees dripped on the garden plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping, though they were planted year after year with that curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face of hopelessness. The moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace was swampt, and Grace stood a resolute. Then she thought of poor Grammar, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South's ending in the same way. Thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle. The nature of her errand and Grammar Oliver's account of the compact she had made lent a fascinating horror to Grace's conception of Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man, but her single object in seeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age and social aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood in Grammar Oliver's shoes, he was simply a remorseless jove of the sciences, who would not have mercy and would have sacrifice. A man whom save for this she would have preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a small village, it was improbable that any long time could pass without her meeting there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now. But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as a merciless unwavering irresistible scientist was not quite in accordance with fact. The real doctor, Fitzpiers, was a man of too many hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wild practice in the rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for the present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a grand solar sweep, through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the ram, sometimes in the ball. One month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in posy. One month in the twins of astrology and astronomy, then in the crab of German literature and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardour without the possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grandma Oliver the term she had mentioned to her mistress. As may be inferred with the tone of his conversation with Winterborn, he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest. Perhaps his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm more to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory, Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not without its admirable side. A keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion, as often as, or oftener than, the books and material of science. But whether he meditated the muses or the philosophers, the loneliness of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature. Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is tolerable, in a even enjoyable and delightful, given certain conditions. But these are not the conditions which attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborn, Melbury and Grace, but not to the doctors. They are old association, and almost exhaustive biographical and historical acquaintance with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon. He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields which look so grey from his windows. Recall whose creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time, whose hands planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill, whose horses and hounds have torn through that underwood. Black birds affect that particular break, what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge or disappointment, have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, solubility, convenience, but if it lacks memories it will ultimately pawl upon him who settles there, without opportunity of intercourse with his kind. In such circumstances maybe an old man dreams of an ideal friend till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to wear that title on his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend likewise, but some humour of the blood will probably lead him to think rather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman's dress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across the field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds his eyes. The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have been enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity he would at most have played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here he could not go so far as amity of cruelty. He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could not help taking her seriously. He went on to imagine the impossible. So far indeed did he go in this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress of Hintock Manor House, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly ready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else. Well, she isn't that, he said, finally, but she is a very sweet nice exceptional girl. The next morning he breakfasted alone as usual. It was snowing, with a fine flake desilteriness just sufficient to make the woodlands gray without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper. To sit before a large fire on such mornings and read and gradually acquire energy till the evening came, and then would lamp a light and feeling full of vigor to peruse some engrossing subject or other till the small hours had hitherto been his practice. But today he could not settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all out of regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company. The breakfast-hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in the same half-snowy half-rainy style, the weather now being the inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds at time too radiant for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their interests. The strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by frozen tawings now. The similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds and framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the natives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended having suddenly failed in their power to absorb them, he felt unutterably dreary. He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The season was unperpicious for accidental encounters with her out of doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One thing was clear, and the acquaintance with her could only, with due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a flirtation, for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into other spheres than this. Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which, as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hud, being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning, the book slipped from his hand, and he fell asleep. CHAPTER XVIII It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always soft and virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife who kept the house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor's room, the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes, while she should go and find him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door. As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and started at perceiving a handsome man snugly and sconce on the couch, like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped in prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awakening herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace, but expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment, she abandoned this intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining philosopher. The windows of Fitzpiers' soul being at present shuttered he probably appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation, but the light abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than counter balanced by the mysterious influence of that state in a stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far as she could criticize it all she became aware that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. The occasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when she had been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as had met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of course her fibre than the one who now confronted her. She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Using the chimney her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn ahead and regard the original. However by an effort she did turn, and there he lay asleep the same as before. The startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the house unobserved. By the time she had gone down the path and through the garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity. Here screened by the head she stood and considered awhile. Drip, drip, drip fell the rain upon her umbrella and around. She had come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in hand. Yet she had allowed her mission to be stultified by a momentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meant nothing after all. In the meantime her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been, had aroused Fitzpiers and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror which Grace had beheld there was no mystery. He had opened his eyes for a few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if indeed he had ever been positively awake. That somebody had just left the room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to have visited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of the person departed, he could hardly doubt. Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-staged gravel path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently open, and through it entered the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview a second time. That he saw her coming, instead of going, made him ask himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her head that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point where the raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry-bed began, she made a little pause. Its peers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and hastily quitting the room he ran down the path to meet her. The nature of her errant he could not divine, but he was prepared to give her any amount of encouragement. "'I beg pardon, Miss Melbury,' he said. "'I saw you from the window, and fancied you might imagine I was not at home, as it is I you are coming for.' "'I was coming to speak one word with you,' nothing more,' she replied. "'And I can say it here.' "'No. No, please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the house, come as far as the porch.' Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside it, its peers closing her umbrella far. "'I have merely a request or petition to make,' she said. "'My father's servant is ill, a woman you know, and her illness is serious.' "'I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?' "'No. I particularly wish you not to come.' "'Oh, indeed.' "'Yes, and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if you were to come. It would almost kill her. My errant is of a peculiar and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs on her mind, that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you might have a body after death.' "'Oh, Grandma Oliver, the old woman with a fine head. She ill, is she?' And so disturbed by her rash compact, I have brought the money back. Will you please return to her, the agreement she signed? Grace held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which he had kept ready tucked in her glove. Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality, and a sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch was narrow, the rain increased. It ran off the porch, and dripped on the creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's cloak and skirts. "'The rain is wetting your dress. Please, do come in,' he said. "'It really makes my heart ache to let you stay here.' Immediately inside the front door was the door of the sitting-room. He flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would. Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this man, and the stressful resignation sat on her as she glided past him into the room, brushing his coat with her elbow by reason of the narrowness. He followed her, shut the door which she somehow had hoped he would leave open, and placing a chair for her sat down. The concern which Grace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had taught him sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been a faint, based on inexplicable reasons. She again proffered the notes. He awoke from looking at her as at a piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, "'Will you then reconsider and cancel the bond which poor grammar Oliver so foolishly gave?' "'I'll cancel it without reconsideration, though you will allow me to have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammar is a very wise woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons and pastimes have entered into such agreements." "'Not fiendish. Strange.' "'Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of the thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic, in this case, an unessential observer.' He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which he unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared an ink at the bottom evidently from the hand of Grammar. Grace put the paper in her pocket with a look of much relief. As Fitzpiers did not take the money, half of which had come from Grace's own purse, she pushed it a little nearer to him. "'No, no, I shall not take it from the old woman,' he said. It is more strange than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection, that our acquaintance should be formed out of it. I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion, but I did not mean to be.' "'Oh, no, no,' he looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled interest. "'I cannot think. I cannot think,' he murmured. "'Something bewilders me greatly.' He still reflected and hesitated. Last night I sat up very late. He at last went on. And on that account I fell into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed, what do you think, that you stood in the room?' Should she tell, she merely blushed. "'You may imagine,' Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded, that it had indeed been a dream, that I should not have dreamed of you without considerable thinking about you first.' He could not be acting, of that she felt assured. "'I fancied in my vision, that you stood there,' he said, pointing to where she had paused. I did not see it directly, but reflected in the glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once carried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the idea. My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the work of a transcendental philosopher last night. And I daresay it was a dose of idealism that I received from it, that made me scarcely able to distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and found that you had appeared to me in time, but not in space, alas.' At moments there was something theatrical, in the delivery of Fitzpiers's effusion, yet it would have been exact to say that it was intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of manifestation, not easily distinguishable from Rodham-on-Taid. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived, that his substance is estimated by the superfaces, and the whole rejected. Grace, however, was no specialist in man's manners, and she admired the sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed. Lovely creature, made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty. "'But can it be,' he said suddenly, that you really were here?' "'I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,' faltered she. The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you, but as she did not return I left. And you saw me asleep?' He murmured with a faint show of humiliation. "'Yes, if you were asleep, and did not deceive me.' "'Why do you say if?' "'I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I looked round upon you I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.' "'Never,' said Fitzpiers fervently. "'Never could I deceive you.' For knowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her, but they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day.' Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the compelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. She was like an inexperienced actress, who, having at last taken up her position on the boards and spoke on her speeches, does not know how to move off. The thought of grammar occurred to her. "'I'll go at once and tell poor grammar of your generosity,' she said. "'It will relieve her at once.' "'Grammers is a nervous disease, too. How singular!' He answered, accompanying her to the door. "'One moment. Look at this. It's something which may interest you.' He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. "'Look into it, please. You'll be interested,' he repeated. He applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. "'What do you think it is?' said Fitzpiers. She did not know. "'That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am investigating.' She started back, not with a version, but with wonder as to how it should have got there.' Fitzpiers laughed. "'Here am I,' he said, endeavouring to carry on simultaneously the study of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world, and the ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contact between them, and your finer sense is quite offended. "'Oh, no, Mr. Fitzpiers,' said Grace earnestly. "'It is not so at all. I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and work. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very much.' Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and self-forgetful in its aspect, that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own. Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain. CHAPTER XIX Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain, which perhaps was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and ruminated on the interview. Grace's curious susceptibility to his presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect, that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace, that results in a new and untried case might be different from those in other cases, where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was his own, notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a sorry product for thousands, he saw nothing but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else would have had any existence. One habit of Fitzpiers's, commoner in dreamers of more advanced age than in men of his years, was that of talking to himself. He paced round his room, with the selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the carpet, and murmured, This phenomenal girl would be the light of my life while I'm at Hintock, and the special beauty of the situation is that her attitude and relations to each other would be purely spiritual. Socially we can never be intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her, and charming as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the ethereal character of my regard, and indeed I have other aims on the practical side of my life. Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation taught on the adentacious marriage he was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of course 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, was that of an ideal and vulgar flirtation with a timber merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he had found what Grace intrinsically was. A 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, 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 realize themselves in the event. Encounters of not more than a minute's duration, frequently repeated, would build up mutual interest, even an intimacy in a lonely place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-tweigs 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 on scene, 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. Indoor people said they had heard a nightingale, to which outdoor people replied contemptuously that they had heard it a fortnight before. The young doctor's practice, being scarcely so large as a London surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere that sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature, which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound. Something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here about this time, was not common to him. Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was the tear of the ripping tool, as it plowed its way along the sticky parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large business and bark, and as he was Grace's father and might possibly be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene, even more than he might have been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he recognized among the workmen the two timides and Robert Creadle, who probably had been lent by Winterborne. Marty South also assisted. Each tree doomed to this flame process was first attacked by Creadle, with a small bill-hook he carefully freed the color of the tree from twigs and patches of moss which encrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable to the little toilette of the executioner's victim. Under this it was barked in its erect position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous, it was the case now, when the oak stood naked leg'd, and as if ashamed, till the ax-man came and cut a ring around it, and the two timides finished the work with the cross-cut saw. As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk, and larger limbs. Marty South was an adept in peeling the upper parts, and there she stood, encaged amid the massive twigs and buds like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest branches beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to proceed. Branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun and moon, while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness. You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty, set fit's peers. No, sir, she said, holding up the tool, a horse's leg-bone fitted into a handle and filed to an edge. It is only that they've less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine. A little shed had been constructed on the spot of attached hurdles and bows, and in front of it was a fire, for which a kettle sung. Fit's peers sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors. The taut that he might settle here, and become welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury, crossed his mind for a moment. Why should he go further into the world than where he was? The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations. His men's tauts were counter-minus with a margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should not his be likewise limited? A small practice among the people around him being the bound of his desires. Presently Marty's south discontinued her operations upon the quivering boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was ready the men were called, and Fit's peers, being in a mood to join, sat down with them. The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one of the men said, Here's he. Turning their heads they saw Melbury's gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss. The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily suspended. Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the horse to a bow. Grace declined to take any other beverage, and remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed. When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him. Bless my heart! Who would have thought of finding you here? He said, obviously, much pleased at the circumstance. I wonder now if my daughter knows her so nigh at hand. I don't expect she do. He looked out towards the gig where, in Grace's face, still turned in the opposite direction. If she doesn't see us—well, never mind, let her be. Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. She was thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before her. Thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond, of her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was probably enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be introduced by her friend's means. She wondered if this patronising lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there would develop on the next. Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men who had heard them often before. Marty, who poured out the tea, was just saying, I think I'll take a cup out to Miss Grace. When they heard a clashing of the gig-harness, and turning round, Melbury saw that the horse had become restless. He was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers, and while her father ran to the horse's head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He relinquished her when she touched the ground, and hoped she was not frightened. Oh, no, not much, she managed to say. There was no danger, unless he had run under the trees, where the bows are low enough to hit my head, which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of alarm. He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much with himself. His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as on those former occasions when he had come closer to her than usual, that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency to tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that Grace was safe turned again to the work-people. His daughter's nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said quite gaily to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group. There's destiny in it, you see. I was doomed to join your picnic, although I did not intend to do so. Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the bark-rippers some re-narratives of their fathers, their grandfathers, and their own adventures in these woods, of the mysterious sights they had seen, only to be accounted for by supernatural agency, of white witches and black witches, and the standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exercised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their old quarters at the rate of a cox stride every New Year's day, old-style, hence the local saying, on New Year's tide a cox stride. It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of pale sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue veil stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning wood, and the sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so highly satisfied at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers' eyes only too frequently alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of going, and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle. As the doctor had helped her out of it, he appeared to think that he had excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention lingeringly enough. "'What were you almost in tears about just now?' he asked softly. "'I don't know,' she said, and the words were strictly true. Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, lords and ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precinct. It was a cider-country, which met the woodland district on the axis of this hill. Over the veil the air was blue as sapphire, such a blue as outside that apple-valley was never seen. Under the blue the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly-flowered trees running almost up to where they drove along. Over a gate which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not observe that passing. "'That was Giles,' said Melbury, when they had gone by. "'Was it?' "'Poor Giles,' said she. "'All that blue means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no blight happens before the setting, the apple-yield will be such as we have not had for years.' Meanwhile in the wood they had come from the men had sat on so long that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening. They were paid by the tonne, and their time for labour was as they chose. They placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led them farther and farther away from the shed, and thus they gradually withdrew as the sun went down. Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely knowing of the men's departure. He dreamed and mused till his consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland around. So little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity with the sentiment of the place. The idea returned upon him of sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here. And instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with infinite pains to accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions. These reflections detained him till the wood was unbrowned with a coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far off. Fitzpiers' eyes commanded as much of the ground and front as was open. Looking upon this he saw a figure whose direction of movement was towards the spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The shape resolved itself into a woman's. She was looking on the ground and walking slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers, by a sort of divination, jumped to the idea that the figure was graces. Her nearer approach made that guess a certainty. Yes, she was looking for something, and she came round by the prostrate trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst into a flame. Unlooking around by the lights thus obtained, she for the first time saw the illuminated face of Fitzpiers precisely in the spot where she had left him. Grace gave a start and a scream. The place had been associated with him in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find them there still. Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to her side. I frightened you dreadfully, I know. He said, I ought to have spoken, but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been sitting here ever since. He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the impression that she was quite overcome and in danger of falling. As soon as she could collect her ideas, she gently withdrew from his grasp, and explained what she had returned for. In getting up or down from the gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had dropped her purse. Now we will find it, said Fitzpiers. He threw an anvil of last year's leaves onto the fire, which made the flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into a denser contrast, turning Eve into night in a moment. By this radiance they groped a belt on their hands and knees till Fitzpiers rested on his elbow and looked at Grace. We must always meet in odd circumstances, he said, and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if it means anything. Oh, no, I am sure it doesn't, said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an erect posture, and pray don't say it any more. I hoped there was not much money in the purse, said Fitzpiers rising to his feet more slowly and brushing the leaves from his trousers. Scarcely, Annie, I cared more about the purse itself because it was given me. Indeed, when he is of little more use at Hintock than on Crusoe's Island, there's hardly any way of spending it. They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his foot. Here it is, he said, so that your father, mother, friend, law, admirer, will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your negligence after all. Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now. The admirer, said Fitzpiers slyly. I don't know if you would call him that, said Grace with simplicity. The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is quite different. He has all the cardinal virtues, and perhaps, though I don't know them precisely, you unconsciously practice them, Miss Melbury, which is better. According to Schlermaker, they are self-control, perseverance, wisdom, and love, and his is the best list that I know. I'm afraid poor—she was going to say that she feared winter-born, the giver of the first years before—had not much perseverance, though he had all the other three, but she determined to go no further in this direction, and was silent. These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his eyes the true aspect of a mistress in a lover's regard. Miss Melbury, he said suddenly, I divine that this virtuous man you mentioned has been refused by you. She could do no otherwise than admit it. I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid I should kneel in another man's place at any shrine unfairly, but, my dear Miss Melbury, now that he is gone may I draw near. I can't say anything about that, she cried quickly, because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than you did before. This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the surgeon's eyes. It rendered her adorable. But cannot you say? He pleaded distractedly. I'd rather not. I think I must go home at once. Oh, yes, said Fitzpiers, but as he did not move she felt it awkward to walk straight away from him, and so they stood silently together. A diversion was created by the accident of two birds that had either been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. They speedily parted, however, and flew up and were seen no more. That's the end of what is called love, said someone. The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavour to trace the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace she exclaimed, Oh, Miss Melbury, I've been following they pigeons and didn't see you. And here's Mr. Winterborne. She continued shyly as she looked towards Fitzpiers who stood in the background. Marty, Grace interrupted, I want you to walk home with me, will you? Come along. And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty's arm and led her away. They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, and onward among the growing trees by a path where there were no oaks and no barking and no Fitzpiers, nothing but copswood, between which the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches. I didn't know Mr. Winterborne was there, said Marty, breaking the silence when they had nearly reached Grace's door. No was he, said Grace, but Miss Melbury, I saw him. No, said Grace, it was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is nothing to me. CHAPTER 20. The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there, and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden, dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off creaking, the wear of the nightjar, however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at midday the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves. Such an appearance it had on Midsummer's Eve of this year, and as the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights. The surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes. While such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the moon-rise, later on when that planet was getting manned of the upper heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open blades as there were in the neighborhood of the Hamlet, it became apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant's premises was not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful time. Fitzpiers, having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden gate, where he now looked more frequently than into his books, fancying that Grace might be a brawl with some friends. He was now irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. That the idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance, which he had hitherto deemed an impossibility, he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the ordinary village girls in a group, some steadily walking, some in a mood of wild gaiety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed him that it being old midsummer's eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and one which she, for her part, would never countenance, saying which she entered her house and retired to bed. The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury's and Marty's South's, but Fitzpires could easily track them by their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones. In the meantime, other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering steltely after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty's South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright, and the night so calm, that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her, and thus joined by Marty these went onward in the same direction. Passing Winterborne's house they heard a noise of hammering. Marty explained it. It was the last night on which his paternal roof would shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired, and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bed-steads with a view to an early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly. When they had proceeded a little further, Marty was joined by Grammar Oliver, who was as young as the youngest in such matters, and Grace and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of keeping their expeditionist secret had been quite defeated. Grace and her stepmother paused by a holly-tree, and at a little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, gently observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the moon. He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by Annie but Marty and Grammar, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly, which sheltered Mrs. and Mrs. Melbury on its bright side. The two former conversed in low tones. "'If they too come up in wood next midsummer night, they'll come as one,' said Grammar, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace, that of Moise Gellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. But though she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it too seemed to me that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterbaugh. Marty returned no comment, and at that minute the girls, some of whom were from great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the encantation, it being now about midnight. "'Directly we see anything. We'll run home as fast as we can,' said one whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbours lurked in the bushes around. "'I wish we had not thought of trying this,' said another, but had contented ourselves with the whole dig in to-morrow at twelve, and here in our husband's trades. It's too much like having dealings with the evil one to try to raise their forms.' However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the particular form of black art to be practised on this occasion was one connected with the sewing of hemp seed, a handful of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back and discern the figure of Miss Melbury, who alone of all the observers stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world's history. She was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered words, one of the girls, a bouncing maiden, guided to young timothy tangs, asked her if she would join them. Grace, with some excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of the rest. Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammar whispered again to Marty, "'Why don't you go and try a look with the rest of the maids?' "'I don't believe in it,' said Marty, shortly. "'Why, half the parish is here. The silly hussies should have kept it quiet. I seem as though winter-born through the leaves just come up with Robert Creadle.' "'Marty, we ought to act the part of Providence sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down at when she comes back, and she will most likely rush into his arms. For as soon as the clock strikes they'll bundle back home along the cares. I've seen such larries before.' "'Do you think I'd better?' said Marty reluctantly. "'Oh, yes, he'd bless you for it. I don't want that kind of blessing.' But after a moment's thought she went and delivered the information, and Grammar had the satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend of the leafy defile, along which Grace would have to return. Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on Grammar's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately discerned what her husband had not, that Grace was rapidly fascinating the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. "'You should beware, Mr. Winterborne is standing,' she said to him significantly. She would run down through that opening much faster than she went up it, if she's like the rest of the girls.' Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scawning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the offhand manner of indifference, which had grown upon him since his dismissal. Neither Grammar nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's maneuver, and still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and tall her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon still and silent for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing. The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of great Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with a flapping of disturbed birds, then two or three hairs and rabbits bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gown soon became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a hand-post to guide her. Then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed into a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but for Miss Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of a knave which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment as if she had been a bird. "'Oh!' cried Grace in her fright. "'You're in my arms, dearest,' said Fitzpiers, and I am going to claim you and keep you there all our two lives.' She rested on him, like one utterly mastered. And it was several seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighbouring breaks revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "'Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?' "'Certainly,' he said, laughing, "'as soon as you have recovered.' She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot plush away. But it had been enough. New relations between them had begun.' The case of the other girls was different, as had been said. They wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her, winter-born having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace, a fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she said with playful effrontery, "'Mayst kiss me, if can't catch me, Tim?' Fitzpiers recognized her as Suki Damson, a hideous damson of the Hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began racing away he started in pursuit. On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand, but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran, and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in which there was a style, and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a changed one, a meadow, where the half made hay lay about in heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon. Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. She flitted a little way down the mead, then all at once her light form disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks. Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he paused, tantalised and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from a hiding place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume. Oh, come in from the foggy, foggy Jew! In a minute or two he uncovered her. Oh! It is not Tim, she said, burying her face. Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its mildness, stooped and imprinted the proposed kiss, then sunk down upon the next hay-cock, panting with his race. What do you mean by Tim, he asked, presently? My young man, Tim Tangs, said she, now, on our bright, did you really think it was he? I did, at first, but you didn't, at last. I didn't, at last. Do you mind much that it was not? No, she answered slyly. Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suki looked very beautiful. The scratches and blemishes incidental to her outdoor occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remained silent, the coarse whir of the eternal night jar burst sarcastically, from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this, not a sound of any kind reached their ears. The time of nightingales being now passed, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least. In the opposite direction the hayfield stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist. CHAPTER XXI When the General Stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking on, and encountering one of the girls had asked her what caused them all to fly. She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. We saw Satan pursuant us with his hourglass. It was terrible. This account, being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards a spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few minutes, he heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bow, he saw in the open space beyond a short stout man, an evening dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat. So awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested the hourglass to his timid observers. If this were the person whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently gesticulated, and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead, of the same shape seen oftener in old prints and paintings and in real life. His curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those of one who was rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, were sufficient to account for any trepidation among the hintock daughters had encountered him. He paused and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was, not observing Giles, who was the colour of his environment. The latter advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand and came towards Giles, the two meeting half-way. "'I have lost my way,' said the stranger. "'Perhaps you can put me in the path again.' He wiped his forehead with the air of one's suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue. "'The turnpike road is over there,' said Giles. "'I don't want the turnpike road,' said the gentleman impatiently. "'I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to it across here?' "'Well, yes, sort a path, but it's hard to find from this point. I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure.' "'Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I'm staying for a day or two, but I did not know what was so far. It's about a mile to the house from here.' They walked on together, as there was no path. Giles occasionally stepped in front and bent aside the underbows of the trees to give his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on being released, flew back like whips. "'Mind your eyes, sir?' To which the stranger replied, "'Yes, yes, in a preoccupied tone.' So they went on, the leaf shadows running in their usual quick succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said, "'Is it far?' "'Not much farther,' said Winterborne. The plantation runs up to a corner here, close behind the house. He added with hesitation. "'You know, I suppose, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home.' "'You mistake,' said the other quickly. "'Mrs. Charmond has been away for some time. But she's at home now.' Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman was wrong. "'You are a native of this place?' the stranger said. "'Yes?' "'Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don't possess.' "'You come from far, seemingly?' "'I now come from the south of Europe.' "'Oh, indeed, sir, you are an Italian or Spanish or French gentleman, perhaps?' "'I am not, either.' Giles did not feel the pause which ensued, and the gentleman who seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length answered the question. "'I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth,' he said. "'I left my native country in the failure of the Southern cause, and have never returned to it since.' He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood. Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland's ward, they could at once see the chimneys of the house, in the gorge immediately beneath their position, silent, still, and pale. "'Can you tell me the time?' the gentleman asked. "'My watch has stopped.' "'It is between twelve and one,' said Giles. His companion expressed his astonishment. "'I have thought it between nine and ten at latest. Dear me, dear me!' He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin which looked like a sovereign for the assistance rendered. Giles declined to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting the money back in his pocket, said awkwardly, "'I offered it, because I want you to utter not a word about this meeting with me. Will you promise?' Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to leave, and returned through the boughs to Hintock. He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy, might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond, whom he had heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated cavalierly. But he received no confirmation of the suspicion beyond a report which reached him a few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who were taking care of Hintock House at an hour-past midnight, and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly and gone away without leaving a card or any trace of himself. The girl who related the story added that he sighed three times before he swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow, such a gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage hired at that inn.