 41 The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily. This is awkward," said Grace with an effort to hide her concern. Winterborne stopped. Grace, he said, preserving a strictly business manner which belied him. You cannot go to Sherton to-night. But I must. Why, it is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this rain. True. Why, she murmured, mournfully at the end of a silence. What is reputation to me? No harken," said Giles. You won't go back to your— No, no, no. Don't make me," she cried piteously. Then let us turn. They slowly retraced their steps and again stood before his door. Now, this house from this moment is yours and not mine, he said deliberately. I have a place nearby where I can stay very well. Her face had drooped. Oh! she murmured as she saw the dilemma. What have I done? There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite was beginning to char. Please, go in and attend to it, he said. Do what you like. Now I leave. You'll find everything about the hut that is necessary. But Giles, your supper, she exclaimed. An outhouse would do for me anything till tomorrow a daybreak. He signified a negative. I tell you to go in. You may catch agios out here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the window if you feel well enough. I'll wait a while. He gently urged her to pass the doorway, and was relieved when he saw her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the threshold himself, he closed the door upon her. And turned the key in the lock. Tapping at the window he signified that she should open the casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her. You were locked in, he said, and your own mistress. Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his scrupulousness as she took the door key. Do you feel better? He went on. If so, and you wish to give me some of your supper, please do. If not, it's of no importance. I can get some elsewhere. The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she only knew half of what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a whisper, Giles! He had once emerged from the shade and saw that she was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate. I don't like to treat you so hardly, she murmured with deep regret in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. But I suppose it is best to arrange like this. Oh yes, he said quickly. I feel that I could never have reached Sherton. It was impossible. Are you sure you have a snug place out there, with renewed misgiving? Quite. Have you found everything you want? I'm afraid it is rather rough accommodation. I can notice no defects. I have long passed that stage, and you know it, Giles, or you ought to. His eyes sadly contemplated her face, as its pale responsiveness modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly to what a pitch she was strong. If ever Winterborne's heart threaded his bosom, it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony and the satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate and cup from my hand, saying, Now, I'll push the shutter, too, and you will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt. Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you. She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away. Oh no, I should be quite within hail, said Winterborne. She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind. Formed of four hurdles attached with break-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay, and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down, and there in the dark tried to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed the plate aside and shook up the hay and sack, so as to form a rude couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting late. But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was thought of his charge. He sat up and looked towards the cot through the damp obscurity. With all its external features the same as usual he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend, he would not use a warmer name, who had come to him so unexpectedly, and he could not help admitting so rashly. He had not ventured to ask any particulars, but the position was pretty clear without them. Though social law had negative forever their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical pride that he accepted the present triumph injecture. There was one man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. That this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him, and the purity of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him more than proof against any frailty that preceded him in relation to her. The rain which had never ceased now drew his attention by beginning to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt some remedy for his discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might. He was angry with himself for his feebleness, he who had been so strong. It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its colour would inevitably betray him. The next morning accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the bench outside the windowsill he placed water, wood, and other necessities, riding with a piece of chalk beside them. It is best that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench. At seven o'clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in response to a signal, she opened the window, and the light fell upon her face. The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her waking hours had not been free from tears. She read the writing, seemed he thought disappointed, but took up the materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of their food. Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night she would have been glad to see him, but appreciating his feeling when she read the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready she put what he required outside, as she had done with the supper, and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself. It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. As she heard no more of Winterborne she concluded that he had gone away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to Sherton. An erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day by force of his condition within fifty yards of where she was. The morning wore on, and in her doubt went to start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, less than intruder should discover her. Locked in this place she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere. The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. Gazing in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the living-room, she could see various small members of the animal community that lived unmolested there. Creatures of hair, fluff, and scale, the toothed kind, and the billed kind, underground creatures, jointed, and ringed, circumambulating the hut, under the impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there, and eyeing it inquisitively with a view to winter quarters. Watching these neighbours, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble, and she managed to while away some of the portion of the afternoon by putting Giles's home in order, and making little improvements which she deemed that he would value when she was gone. Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees, resembling a cough, but as it never came any closer she concluded that it was a squirrel or a bird. At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the evenings where chilly. As soon as it was too dark, which was comparatively early, to discern the human countenance in this place of shadows, there came to the window to her great delight a tapping which she knew from its method to be Giles's. She opened the casement instantly, and put her hand out to him, though she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and she noticed the heat of his palm, and its shakiness. He has been walking fast in order to get here quickly, she thought. How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw the shelter had by, and that the heat of his hand was feverishness? My dear good Giles! she burst out impulsively. Anybody would have done it for you, replied Winterborne, with as much matter of fact as he could summon. About my getting to Exbury, she said, I have been thinking, responded Giles with tender deference, that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to be called. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you like, and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he'll go away. At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist, such as make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton Abbas with you, for the cider season will be coming on, and I want to run down the Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton Road. But for a day or two I am busy here. He was hoping that by the time mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her behalf, I hope you do not feel over much melancholy of being a prisoner. She declared that she did not mind it, but she sighed. From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart symptoms like books of large type. I fear you are sorry you came, said Giles, and that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to stay. Oh no, dear, dear friend, answered Grace with a heaving bosom. Don't think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced treatment of you, dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you, what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again. But as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done, but I have promised, and I will pay. The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude towards him, and of life in general. The only infringement, if infringement it could be called, of his predetermined bearing towards her, was an involuntary passing of her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement to bid him good night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not see her tears. She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the cottage. But it would be only for a day or two more, she thought, since go she must. He replied yearningly, I don't like you to go away. Oh, Giles, said she, I know, I know, but I am a woman, and you are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report, you know what is in my mind, because you know me so well. Yes, Grace, yes, I do not at all mean that the question between us has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly unalterable. I merely meant, well, a feeling no more. In a week at the outside I should be discovered if I stayed here, and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him. Yes, perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace. His last words that evening were a hopeful remark, that all might be well with her yet, that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life if he found that his presence caused her so much pain. Then the window was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died away. No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to rise, and after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on it was difficult to believe that no opaque body but only an invisible colorless thing was trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old story the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devoury of a gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself, a vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear intentions was not there. Sometimes a bow from an adjoining tree was swaying so low as to smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain as blood from the wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed, how much she did not know. At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such hardship in relation to him. Whatever he was suffering it was she who had caused it. He vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such self-sacrifice. She should not have accepted it of him. And yet, as her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had heeded but little at the time. The look of his face—what had there been about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of Wright Bottom's brother to whom she had formally compared him? And his voice, she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait—surely it had been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, it might have been his cough after all. Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind, that Winterbourne was ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition from her, that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality, which, by the nature of the case, expelled her entertainer. My own own true, my dear kind friend, she cried to herself, Oh it shall not be, it shall not be. She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting down the candle on the table there, she went to the door with a key in her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her finger still clutching it, and pressing her other hand to her forehead, she fell into agitating thought. A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree droppings blowing against it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened the door. The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance. She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been, and was, the dripping of the eaves, splashed like a fountain. She stood listening with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand till her eyes, growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of their bows by the adjoining trees. At last she cried loudly with an effort, Giles, you may come in. There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own temerity Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and with far more determination than the first. Giles! Giles! She cried with the full strength of her voice, and without any of the shame-facedness that had characterized her first cry. Come in! Come in! Where are you? I have been wicked, and I have taught too much of myself. Do you hear? I don't want to keep you out any longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Giles! A reply. It was a reply. Through the darkness and wind, a voice reached her, floating upon the weather as though part of it. Here I am. All right. Don't trouble about me. Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I don't mind what they say, or what they think any more. I am all right, he repeated. It is not necessary for me to come. Good night. Good night. Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been mistaken about his health? Perhaps after all, she had perceived a change in him because she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes did his aging work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she could. He would not come in. She retired to rest again. END OF CHAPTER 41 The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight o'clock struck, and she remembered that he had not come to arouse her by a knocking as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir. The breakfast was set in its place without, but he did not arrive to take it, and she waited on. Nine o'clock arrived, and the breakfast was cold, and still there was no giles. A thrush that had been repeating itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some time, came and took a morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around, and took another. At ten o'clock she drew in the tray, and sat down to her own solitary meal. He must have been called away on business early, the rain having cleared off. Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity, but as the day was comparatively fine, the dreadless some stray passenger a woodman should encounter in such a reconnoiter paralyzed her wish. The solitude was further accentuated today by the stopping of the clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of flakes of salt, loosened by the rains. At noon she heard a slight rustling outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun rays that would be worth having till the following May. She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little. In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown down by the gale. Above stretch an old beach with vast armpits and great pocket-holes in its sides, where branches had been amputated in past times. A black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyasauri in a museum, and beyond them were perishing wood-bind stems, resembling old ropes. From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen, and stockinged with moss. Other roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from the mutual rubbings and blows. It was a struggle between these neighbours that she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from the mossy settings like decayed teeth from green gums. Further on were other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves, variety upon variety, dark green and pale green. Moss-like little fur-trees, like plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss. The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so great on this the most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be well now impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The evening came at last. The sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet trunks shine and throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the leaves beneath the beach that they were turned to gory hues. When night had last arrived and with it its time for his return, she was nearly broken down with suspense. The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth, and yet Giles did not come. It was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room grew darker, and only the fire-light broke against the gloom of the walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her staying-power to pass the night without hearing from him or from somebody. Yet eight o'clock drew on, and his form at the window did not appear. The meal remained untasted, suddenly rising from before the hearth of smolering embers, where she had been crouching with the hands clasped over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. Every breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain had resumed a steady dripping of the night before. Grace might have stood there five minutes when she fancied she heard that old sound, a cough at no great distance, and it was presently repeated. If it were Winterborne she must be very near her. Why then had he not visited her? A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging above her head. To light it and go in the direction of the sound would be the obvious way to solve the dread problem, but the conditions made her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at further sounds from the same quarter. They were low mutterings. At first like persons in conversation, but gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in deep, secret places, where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against stones. But by degree she was convinced that the voice was Winterborne's. Yet who could be his listener so mute and patient, for though he argued so rapidly and persistently nobody replied. A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. Oh! she cried in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out. How selfishly correct I am always! Too, too correct! Cruel propriety is killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own. While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening out without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings had preceded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at a distance of about forty yards and a small erection of hurdles, not much larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the woods and copses when the cutting season was going on. It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in, appearing in short to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel. The side towards Grace was open, and turning the light upon the interior, she beheld what a prescient fear had pictured in snatches all the way thither. Upon the straw within Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had seen him during the whole of her stay there, except that his hat was off, and his hair was matted and wild. Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were flung over his head, his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met her own, she perceived that he did not recognize her. Oh, my child! she cried. What have I done to you? But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors. How Grace performed that labour she could never have exactly explained. But by dint of clasping her arms around him, rearing him into a sitting posture and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it in both of her hands dragged him along the path to the entrance of the hut, and after a pause for breath in at the doorway. It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a moment recognized her, continuing his rapid conversation to himself, and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural creature, of the visionary world in which he was mentally living. The undertaking occupied her more than ten minutes, but by that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed. Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There was something in his luck which agonized her, in the rush of his thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet, erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable. Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair, exclaiming in a low voice. How could I? How could I? Her timid morality had indeed underrated his chivalry till now, though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been fully understood by Grace till this strained self-sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it added something that was little short of reverence to the deep affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of Aphrodite in a constitution. All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did, and the power to express her solicitude and action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as lightly to be in any way alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the cause of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow. Six months before this day the scene, almost similar in its mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, though a woman's devotion had been common to both. Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and bracing her energy saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was fatal to her own concealment. But even had the chance of benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake. The question was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near? There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance, a man who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the brain most likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to be brought to the sick Giles' side. The attempt should be made. Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford her an opportunity. She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things, cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and, having set it up, placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she closed the door and started. The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company, and banish all sense of darkness from her mind. The reins had imparted a phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood, and rotting leaves that lay about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the woodland, but followed a more open course which eventually brought her to the highway. Once here she ran along with great speed, animated by a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical, and it was with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour's progress, she passed over Rubdown Hill and onward towards that same Hintock, and that same house out of which she had fled, a few days before, in irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things, of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of flight and sink all regard of personal consequences. One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as ever, his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his persistence equaled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him. His freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices had indeed been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighbourhood, where people could not believe that nature herself affected cures, and that the doctor's business was only to smooth away. It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's house, now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about Winterborne's residence, a pervasive lightness had hung upon the damp bottom sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on the pillars and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing, wherein the apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave light to his bed-chamber. She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart in spite of herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her foregoing troubles? Alas! Old Jones was seven miles off. Giles was possibly dying. What else could she do? It was in a perspiration, not even more by consciousness than by exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and waited to see the result. The night bell which had been fixed when Fitzpiers first took up his residence, there still remained. But as it had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his elopement, she did not venture to pull it now. Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In half a minute the window was opened, and the voice said, Yes, inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband and the speaker at once. Her effort was now to disguise her own accents. Doctor, she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command. A man is dangerously ill in one chimney hut out towards Delborough, and you must go to him at once in all mercy. I will, readily. The alacrity, surprise and pleasure expressed in his reply, amazed her for a moment. But in truth they denoted the sudden relief of a man who, having got back in the mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment to fearful joys, found a soothing routine of professional practice unexpectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of a soul just now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If this, his first summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances. Do you know the way? she asked. Yes, said he. Won't you me hut? she repeated, and immediately. Yes, yes, said its peers. She remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without slamming it and hastened on her way back. Her husband then had re-entered her father's house. How he had been able to affect a reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truth must have been entered into, that is all she could say. But close as the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which banished it, and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering trackways. Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of his mind, over and above his professional seal, was peculiar. At Grace's first remark, he had not recognized or suspected her presence. But as she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the speaker's voice to his wife's. He had taken in such good faith the statement of the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a time, because she could not at once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually believe his comeer to be she. It was one of the features of Fitzpiers's repentant humour, at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her, though nobody had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, and of all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy. Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it. Moreover, the tragic colour of the antecedent events that he had been a great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had got into no danger on a way, as he supposed, to sherton, and then to expiry, if that were the place she had gone to, for bearing all enquiries since the strangeness of her departure would have made it natural. A few months before this time, a performance by Grace of one tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwanted investigation. It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers's domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs. Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon's re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained. His self-humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate, and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man, his desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could, with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from calling up a stable man to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for one chimney-hut on foot, as Grace had done. She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached the sufferer. He had begun to knew those terrible mutterings, and his hands were cold. As soon as she saw him, they returned to her that agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off her at time. Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more than the mere lover would have loved, had martyred himself for her comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps without. She knew whose footsteps they were. Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's hand, so that when her husband entered, the patient lay between herself and him. He still transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief. Satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thoughts of the man, which only returned in the form of a subconscious that did not interfere with her words. Is he dying? Is there any hope? She cried. Grace said to its peers in an indescribable whisper, more than invocating if not quite deprecatory. He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic character, though that was striking enough to a man who called himself the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse, but in its character as the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been for least charmed. Is he in great danger? Can you save him? She cried again. Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively, as to the effect of his coming words. He is dying, he said, with dry precision. What? said she. Nothing can be done by me or any other man. It will soon be all over. The extremities are dead already. His eyes still remained fixed on her, the conclusion to which he had come seemed to end his interest professional and otherwise in Winterborne for ever. But it cannot be. He was well three days ago. Not well, I expect. This seemed like a secondary attack which has followed some previous illness, possibly typhoid. It may have been months ago or recently. Ah! He was not well, you are right. He was ill. He was ill when I came. There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or apparently her thoughts at all to her husband. He occasionally murmured, with automatic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the pain of the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending over him during the intervals in silent tears. Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing, and that he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour the delirium passed. Then there was an interval of somber and painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed quietly away. Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. Have you lived here long? Said he. Grace was wild with sorrow, with all that had befallen her, with the cruelties that had attacked her, with life, with heaven. She answered at random. Yes, by what right do you ask? Don't think I'll claim any right, said Fitzpiers, sadly. It is for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as you feel, that I am a vagabond, a brute, not worthy to possess the smallest fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient interest in you to make that inquiry. He is everything to me. Said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids. Where she kept it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she were stroking a little bird. He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber, where his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessities that she had brought. Grace, if I may call you so, he said, I have been already humiliated almost to the depths. I have come back, since you refuse to join me elsewhere. I have entered your father's house, and borne all that that cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved humiliation. But is there yet greater humiliation in store for me? You say you have been living here, that he is everything to you. I might withdraw from that the obvious, the extremest inference. Triumph had any prices sweet to men and women, especially the latter. It was her first and last opportunity for repaying him for the cruel contumely which she had borne at his hand so docilely. Yes, she answered, and there was that in her subtly compounded nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so. Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character, she half repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been abstracted at his stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His determination was fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently he looked across at Winterbourne. Would it startle you to hear? He said, as if he hardly had breath to utter the words, that she who was to me what he was to you is dead also. Dead? She dead! exclaimed Grace. Yes, Phyllis Charmond is where this young man is. Never! said Grace vehemently. He went on without heeding the insinuation. And I came back to try to make it up with you, but Fitzpiers rose and moved across the room to go away, looking downward with a droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not to spare. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She was still bending over the body of Winterbourne, her face close to the young man's. Have you been kissing him during his illness? asked her husband. Yes. Since his favorite state set in. Yes. On his lips? Yes. Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as possible. He drew a small file from his pocket and returned to offer it to her. Grace shook her head. If you don't do as I tell you, you may soon be like him. I don't care. I wish to die. I'll put it here, said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge beside him. The sin of not having warned you will not be on my head at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I suppose I shall be bound to tell him. Certainly. Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and weeping. She hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor Giles's features, and went towards the door where her husband had stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which, like a feather bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level, were indented by the pressure of her husband's receding footsteps. It reminded her that she had been struck with a change in his aspect. The extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and the care-worn dignity had been super-added. She returned to Winterbourne's side, and during her meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room, and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was. What! Marty! said Grace. Yes, I have heard. Said Marty, whose demeanour had lost all its girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have bruised her. He died for me, murmured Grace heavily. Marty did not fully comprehend, and she answered. It belongs to neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my plainness. I have come to help you, ma'am. He never cared for me, and he cared much for you. But he cares for us both alike now. Oh, don't! Don't, Marty! Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterbourne from the other side. Did you meet my husband, Mr. Fitzpiers? No. But then what brought you here? I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of the wood this time of the year, and I am obliged to get there before four o'clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking. I have passed by here often at this time. Grace looked at her quickly. Then did you know I was here? Yes, ma'am. Did you tell anybody? No. I knew you lived in the hut that he'd get it up to you, and lodged out himself. Did you know where he lodged? No. That I couldn't find out. Was it at Delborough? No. It was not there, Marty. It would have been. It would have saved. Saved. To check her tears, she turned, and seeing a book on the window-bench took it up. Look, Marty, this is a salter. He was not an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart. Shall we read a psalm over him? Oh, yes, we will, with all my heart. Grace opened a thin brown book which poor Giles had kept at hand, mainly for the convenience of wetting his pen-knife upon its leather covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty said, I should like to pray for his soul. So should I, said her companion, but we must not. Why, nobody would know. Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense of making amends for having neglected them in the body, and their tender voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when new and more numerous footfalls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognised as her father. She rose and went to the outer apartment in which there was only such light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were standing there. I don't reproach you, Grace, said her father, with an estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. What has come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, beyond wailing. Perhaps I drove you to it, but I am hurt, I am scourged, I am astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said. Without replying Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber. Marty, she said quickly, I cannot look my father in the face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him what you have told me, what you saw, that he gave up his house to me. She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father if he had met her husband. Yes, said Melbury, and you know all that has happened. I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting me of worse than rashness. I ought to know you better. Are you coming with me to what was once your home? No, I am staying with him. Take no account of me any more. The unwanted, perplexing, agitating relations in which he had stood to Winterborne quite lately, brought about by Melbury's own contrivance, could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at her more recent doings. My daughter, things are bad, he rejoined. But why do you persevere to make him worse? What good can you do to Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don't inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your course would have been if he had not died, though I know there's no deliberate harmony. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you will show no less kindness to him. And escape any sound of shame. But I don't wish to escape it. If you don't on your own account, can you not wish it on mine and hers? Nobody except our household knows that you left home. Then why should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave? If it were not for my husband, should be gone moved by his words. But how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man's creature join him after what has taken place? He would go away again rather than keep you out of the house. How do you know that, Father? We met him on our way here, and he told us all, said Mrs. Melbury. He had said something like it before. He seems very much upset altogether. He had cleared to her that when he came to our house that he would wait for time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness, said her husband. That was it, wasn't it, Lucy? Yes. He said that he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him absolute permission, Mrs. Melbury added. The antecedent to considerateness of Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as it was unexpected, and though she did not desire his presence, she was sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different reason for avoiding her. She made no further objections to accompanying her parents, taking them into the inner room to give Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or three things that belonged to her. While she was doing this, the two women came who had been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor creedle. Forgive me, but I can't rule my mind and know how as a man should, Mr. Melbury, he said. I hadn't seen him since Thursday night, and I've wondered for days where he's been keeping. There was I expecting him to come home and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against the Macon, and here he was. Well, I knowed him from table-high, I knowed his father, used to bite out upon two sticks and the son of four he died, and now we've seen the end of the family, which we can't afford to lose with such a scanty lot of good folk and hint-ock as we got, and now Robert Creedle had been nailed up on parish-boards, I believe, and nobody had clutched down his cyphery. They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death, pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Winter-borne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of them. The young trees so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly, when he had said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them with his subtle hand. One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back to the house, said Melby at last, the death of Mrs. Charmond. Ah, yes, said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection. He told me so. Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles's. She was shot by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany the unfortunate man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina gentleman of very passionate nature who used to haunt this place to force her to an interview and followed her about everywhere. And so ends the brilliant Felice Charmond. Once a good friend to me, but no friend to you. I can forgive her, said Grace absently. Did Edgar tell you of this? No, but he put a London newspaper giving an account of it on the hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It'll be in the shirt and paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn still to him, he had just before had sharp words with her and left her. He told Lucy this as nothing about him appears in the newspaper. And the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we've left behind us. Do you mean Marty? Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily, for pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story was, she had no heart for it now. Yes, Marty's out. Melbury persisted in his narrative to divert her from her present grief if possible. Before he went away she wrote him a letter, which he kept in his pocket a long while before reading. He chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond's presence and read it out loud. It contained something which teased her very much and that led to the rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with her terrible death. Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was that Marty's out's letter had been concerning a certain personal adornment common to herself in Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its billet at last. The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp, as only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification of one woman by another in the presence of a lover. True, Marty had not affected it by word of mouth. The charge about the locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George Herbert, a flat delight. He had stroked those false dresses with his hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being finely satirical, despite her generous disposition. That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt departure she had followed him to the station, but the train was gone, and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that precipitate scene of passion and crime, Fitzpiers had known nothing till he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunately for himself, no mention was made of his prior acquaintance with the unhappy lady. Nor was there any allusion to him in the subsequent inquiry, the double death being attributed to some gambling losses, though, in point of fact, neither one of them had visited the tables. Melbury and his daughter drew near the house. Having seen but one living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree, but dropping the sweet chest at which it carried, cried chut, chut, chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. When the roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from the screen of bows, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstracted advance. You clearly understand, she said to her stepmother some of her old misgiving returning, that I am coming back only on condition of his leaving as he promised. Will you let him know this, that there may be no mistake? Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would probably be gone by the evening. Grace then entered with him into Melbury's wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor, while her stepmother went to Fitzpiers. The prompt obedience to their wishes, which the surgeon showed, did honour to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the room, Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window bench, saw her husband go from the door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in his hand. While passing through the gate, he turned his head. The far light of the room she sat in threw her figure into dark relief against the window as she looked through the panes, and he must have seen her distinctly. In a moment he went on. The gate fell too, and he disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced him, and now she had banished him. End of Chapter 43 Chapter 44 of The Woodlanders This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tyge Hines The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy Chapter 44 Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in. He murmured some statements in which the words feverish symptoms occurred. Grace heard them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this visitation upon herself. One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering if she really were going to join him who had gone before her, Grammar Oliver came to her bedside. I don't know where this is meant for you to take, ma'am, she said, but he found it on the table. It was left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning. Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammar held up. It was the file left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some drops of its contents, if she wished to preserve herself from falling victim to the malady which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it as well as she could. The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a label with an inscription in Italian. He had probably got it in his wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, but could understand that the cordial was a febrefuge of some sort. Her father, her mother, and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved to obey her husband's directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops dropped in. The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect, less inclined to fret and chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From that time the fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration. How clever he is, she said regretfully. Why could he not have had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account? Perhaps he has saved my useless life, but he doesn't know it, and doesn't care whether he has saved it or not, and on that account will never be told by me. Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as Elijah drew down fire from heaven. As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage. The current of her being had again set towards the loss of Giles Winterborne. Marty, she said, we both loved him. Will we go to his grave together? Great Intuck Church stood at the upper part of the village, and could be reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late September day they went hither by secret ways, walking mostly in silence side by side, each busyed with her own thoughts. Grace had a trouble exceeding Marty's, that haunting sense of having put out the light of his life by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade herself that he might have died of his illness, even if she had not taken possession of his house. Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt, sometimes she did not. They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down, they could see over the woodland for miles, down to the vale in which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with his portable mill and press, to make cider about this time. Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the second. On Marty's part there was the same consideration, never would she have been his, as no anticipation of gratified affection had been in existence while he was with him. There was none to be disappointed now that he was gone. Grace was abased when, by degree, she found that she never understood Giles's as Marty had done. Marty, self-alone of all the women in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne's level of intelligent intercourse with nature. In that respect she had formed a compliment to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart, had subjoint her thought to his as a corollary. The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock Woods, had been with these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge. They had been able to read its hieroglyphics as ordinary writing. To them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to grace at touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled, together they had with the run of ears, mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols, which, seen in few, were of ruinic obscurity. But altogether made an alphabet. From the slight lashings of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree whence they stretched. From the quality of the wind's murmur through a bow, they could, in like manner, name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the season were seen by them from the conjurer's own point of view, and not from that of the spectators. He ought to have married you, Marty, and nobody else in the world, said grace with conviction after thinking somewhat in the above's drain. Marty shook her head. In all our out-of-door days and years together, ma'am, she replied, the one thing that he never spoke of to me was love, nor right to him. And yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew, not even my father, though he came nearest knowing, the tongues of the trees and fruits and flowers themselves. She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty, but the hard core to her grief, which Marty's had not, remained. Had she been sure that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have driven her well nigh to insanity, but there was always that bare possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was inevitable. She longed to believe that it had not done even this. There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him, it would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that followed her flight, and in withdrawing her original defiant announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness which she did not care to show. She doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her as she made a clean confession of the actual situation. But to volunteer the correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of. It would probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been already declared of Fitzpiers, that a man whom Grace's fidelity could not keep fateful was stung into passionate throbs of interest concerning her by her avowal of the contrary. He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full compass if she were capable of such reprisal, and melancholy as it may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a smoldering admiration of her. He passed a month or two of great misery and expiry, the place to which he had retired. Quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have known it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living creature. How much so ever he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope dawned upon him. He wondered if her affirmation were true. He asked himself whether it were not the act of a woman whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the contingencies of such an announcement. His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in many cases, women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they lacked an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light Grace's bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one who was a child to the realities of obliquity. Fitzpiers's mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a melancholy journey to the neighbourhood of Little Hintock, and here he hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences that he had ever known in his life. He walked about the woods that surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed near Marty South's cottage. As usual she had lighted her candle without closing her shutters. He saw her within as he had seen her many times before. She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself, he could not resist speaking into her through the half-open door. What are you doing that for, Marty? Because I want to clean them. They are not mine. He could see indeed that they were not hers, for one was a spade large and heavy, and another was a bill-hawk which she could only have used with both hands. The spade, though not a new one, had been so completely burnished that it was as bright as silver. Fitzpiers somehow devined that there were gilded winter-borns, and he put the question to her. She replied in the affirmative. I am going to keep them, she said, but I can't get his apple-mill and press. I wish I could. It is going to be sold, they say. Then I will buy it for you, Fitzpiers. That will be making you a return for the kindness you did me. His glance fell upon the girl's rare-colored hair which had grown again. Oh, Marty, those locks of yours and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it nevertheless. He added, musingly. After this there was a confidence between them, such confidence as there had never been before. Marty was shy indeed of speaking about the letter, and her motives in writing it, but she tanked them warmly for his promise of the cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn season, as he had done, she said. She would be quite strong enough with old Creedle as an assistant. Ah! there was one nearer to him than you, said Fitzpiers, referring to winter-born, one who lived where he lived, and was with him when he died. Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances, from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told him of Giles' generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the risk, and possibly the sacrifice of his own life. When the surgeon heard it, he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed the wish to Marty that his visitor should be kept secret, and went home thoughtfully, feeling that in more than one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in vain. He would have given much to in Grace's forgiveness then. But whatever he dared to hope for and that kind from the future, there was nothing to be done yet, while Giles' winter-born's memory was green. To wait was imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts and lead her to look on him with toleration, if not with love. The weeks and months of mourning for winter-born had been passed by Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to great Hintock, and like the two mourners in Symboline, sweetened his sad grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as a debt how little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement. Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it through the accident that they were having parted just before under the influence of Marty South's letter, the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature. Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not have found a native grave. She had enjoyed with a life-interest in the estate which, after her death, passed to a relative of her husband's, one who knew not for lease, and whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of her. On a certain day in February, the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in fact, a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had rementally promised her for that particular day a long time before. It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town where he had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical man whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set them right. He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join him. There the practical part ended, and he went on. My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace, and dearest wife that every an airing man undervalued. You may be absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it. I have never loved any woman, alive or dead, as I love, respect and honour you at this present moment. What you told me in pride and heartiness of your heart I never believed. This, by the way, was not strictly true. But even if I had believed it, it could not have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you? No, there is not. That I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers? That the old familiar rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me. If you could condescend, even only to see me again, you would be breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on this lover's day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancy's whimsical, but remember, sweet, lost one, that nature is one in love, and where it is fine, it sends some instance of itself. I will not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending back one line to say that you will consent at any rate to a short interview. I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this slight means of making a few explanations, and of putting my position before you. Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel, your lover always wants your husband. E. It was oddly enough the first occasion, or nearly the first, on which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought that upon the whole he wrote love-letters very well, but the chief rational interest of the letter to the Reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as he proposed would offer her of setting her doubts at rest one way or the other on her actual share in Winterborne's debt. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one professional man who had seen Giles at the time, would be immense. As for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to admit to him that his belief was the true one. For in wronging herself as she did when she made it, she had done what the horror was a far more serious thing. She wronged Winterborne's memory. Without consulting her father, or anyone in the house or out of it, Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two conditions, of which the first was that the place of the meeting should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty South accompanying her. Whatever part, much, or little, there may have been if Fitzpiers his so-called Valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting of spring when a brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned. A few minutes before three, on the appointed day, found him climbing the well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements in their lives during his residence at Hintock. The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret that seldom left him now. Whatever parts might lie open to his future, the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him for ever as a permanent dwelling-place. He longed for the Society of Grace, but to lay offerings on her slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have made much, would be to let her feel absolutely free to choose between living with him and without him. Moreover, as subtlest in emotions, he cultivated as under glass strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus vivendi to grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her sweet will for a time he demanded no more, and found solace in the contemplation of the soft misery she caused him. Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party. Though the wind was keen, the women were in light attire, and the flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly, as to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of gravity. In the books of Bride, Fitzpiers recognised no other than Sukey Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess. The small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. Fitzpiers could not escape for they had seen him, though of all the beauties in the world whom he did not wish to meet, Sukey was the chief. But he put the best face on the matter that he could, and came on. The approaching company evidently discussing him and the separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him, he expressed his congratulations. We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit, said Tim. First we head across to Delbra, and a thwart to here, and from here we go to Rubdown, and Miltshot, and then round with the crossroads home. No, home, says I, but it won't be that long. We'll be off next month. Indeed, where to? Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand, not but that he would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and wanted to leave, so he had given way. Then good-bye, said Fitzpiers, I may not see you again. He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. Good-bye, Suki, he said, taking her hand also. I wish you and your husband prosperity in the country you have chosen. With this he left them and hastened on to his appointment. The wedding-party reformed and resumed march likewise. But in restoring his arm to Suki, Tim noticed that our fallen blooming countenance had undergone a change. Hello, my dear, what's the matter? said Tim. Nothing to speak of, said she, but to give the lie to her assertion, she was seized with lacrimose twitches that soon produced a dribbling face. Now, what the devil's this about? exclaimed the bridegroom. She's a little wee bit overcompo, dear, said the first bride's maid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suki's eyes. I never did like parting from people, said Suki, as soon as she could speak. Why him, in particular? Well, he's such a clever doctor, there's a thousand pities which I can't see him any more. Now, he knows which clever doctor is he in New Zealand, if I should require one, and the thought of it got the better of my feelings. They walked on, but Tim's face had grown rigid and pale, for he recalled slight circumstances disregarded at the time of their occurrence. The former boyster's laughter of the wedding-party at the groom's man's jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more. By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish gray masses of brushwood around. Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture till at length their glances met for a moment, when she demurely set off hers at a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind, and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers. I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something important, said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a direction that she had not quite wished it to take. I am most attentive, said her husband. Shall we take to the wood for privacy? Grace demured, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public rolled. At any rate, would she take his arm? This was also gravely negative, the refusal being audible to Marty. Why not? He inquired. Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers, how can you ask? Right, right, he said, his effusiveness strivelled up. As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. It is about a matter that may perhaps be unpleasant to you, but I think I need not consider that too carefully. Not at all, said Fitzpiers heroically. Then she took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come upon him, particularising the dampness of the shelter to which he had be taken himself, his concealment from her of the hardship that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears, as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her. Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her narrative indirectly revealed. The actual harmlessness of an escapade with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had been the result of aim or accident. With regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her favour. Winterborne's apparent strength during the last months of his life must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a first attack of that insidious disease, a person's apparent recovery was a physiological mendacity. The relief which came to grace lay almost as much in sharing her knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave her. Well, then, to put this case before you and obtain your professional opinion was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day, said she when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion. For no other reason at all, he asked ruefully. It was nearly the whole. They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying in a low voice, and yet I love you more than I ever loved you in my life. Grace did not move her eyes from the birds and folded her delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection. It is a different kind of love altogether, said he, less passionate, more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the object at all, much to do with the character and goodness as revealed by closer observation. Love talks with better knowledge and knowledge with dearer love. That's out of measure for measure, she said slyly. Oh, yes, I meant it as a citation, blandly replied Fitzpiers. Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again? The crash of a felt tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled a past at that moment and all the homely faithfulness of winter-borne. Don't ask it. My heart is in the grave with Giles, she replied staunchly. Mine is with you, in no less deep a grave I fear according to that. I am very sorry, but it cannot be helped. How can you be sorry for me when you willfully keep open the grave? Oh, no, that is not so. Returned Grace quickly and moved to go away from him. But dearest Grace, said he, you have condescended to come, and I thought from it that perhaps, when I had passed through a long state of probation, you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our getting completely reconciled, treat me gently, wretch, though I am. I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so. But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you think so. Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear that she might mislead him. I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel contempt, she said evasively, and all I feel is lovelessness. I have been very bad, I know, he returned. But unless you can really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I don't want you to receive me again for duty's sake, or anything of that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my own personal comfort, I should not have come back here. I could have obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without coldness or reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is tarnished, to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse treatment than from any other man alive, all for you. This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe. Before you go, he continued, I want to know your pleasure about me. What do you wish me to do or not to do? You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice myself than stand in a position to give it. You don't need advice. Why is this dearest woman that ever lived? If you did, would you give it to me? Would you act upon what I gave? That is not a fair inquiry, she said, smiling despite her gravity. I don't mind hearing it. What you do really think the most correct and proper course for me? It is so easy for me to say, yet I dare not, for it would be provoking you to remonstrances. Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he interrupted her with— Oh, one moment, dear Grace, will you meet me again? She eventually agreed to meet him that day, fortnight. Fitzpiers expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with which he entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily that he submitted to her will, that he would regard her as a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege. All this was to assure her. It was only too clear that he had not won her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain fascination that had carried with it, his reflections were somber as he went homeward. He saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great awareness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul. He was himself too fastidious to care to coercer. To be an object of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable. When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would feign of consulted Marty on the question of platonic relations with her former husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great interest in her affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father. At any rate she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally seeing her husband. Her father was cheerful and walked by her side as he had done in earlier days. I was thinking of you when you came up, he said. I have considered that what has happened is for the best, since your husband has gone away and seems not to wish to trouble you. Why, let him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You can live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate or do what he likes for his good. I wouldn't mind sending him the further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered with him any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without speaking to me or meeting me, and that would have been very unpleasant on both sides. These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in following them, by saying that she had just met her husband by appointment. Then would you advise me not to communicate with him, she observed. I shall never advise you again. You are your own mistress, do as you like. But my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you had better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playin' bo peep. You sent him away, and now he's gone. Very well, trouble him no more. Grace felt a guiltiness, she hardly knew why, and made no confession. End of CHAPTER XIV The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed indoors a great deal. She became quite a student reading more than she had done since her marriage, but her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness for the purpose of putting snow-drops, prim-roses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came. One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father's garden, which, like the rest of the Hintuck enclosures, abutted onto the wood. A slight footpath led along here, forming a secret way to either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along the path and held up his hand to detain her. It was her husband. I am delighted, he said, coming up out of breath, and there seemed no reason to doubt his words. I saw you some way off. I was afraid you would go in before I could reach you. It is a week before the time, she said reproachfully. I set a fortnight from the last meeting. My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me. Would it make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you? She did not refuse her hand, but when she showed a wish to retain at a moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller so that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive wood, not yet to be treated resumingly, and he was correspondingly careful to tranquilise her. His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. I had no idea you came so often, she said. How far do you come from? From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton Abbas, for if I hire, people will know that I come. And my success with you so far has not been great enough to justify such a verteness. Now, my dear one, as I must call you, I put it to you. Will you see me a little often or as the spring advances? Grace lapsed into unwanted sedateness, and avoiding the question said, I wish you would concentrate on your profession and give up those strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would get on. It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn, or at least get rid of, all my philosophical literature. It is in the bookcases in your room. The fact is, I never cared much for obstrucest studies. I am glad to hear you say that. And those other books, those piles of old plays, what good are they to a medical man? None-whatever, he replied cheerfully, seldom at Sherton for what they were fetch. And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of Filts and Ong and Ilts and Mary and Mathoy. You haven't been reading them, Grace. Oh, no, I just looked into them. That was all. Make a bonfire of them. Directly you get home. I meant to do it myself. I can't think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only a few professional handbooks now, and I am quite a practical man. I am in hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think you could come to me again? I would rather you did not press me on that just now. She replied with some feeling. You have said you mean to lead a new, useful, effectual life, but I should like to see you put it in practice for a little while before you address that query to me. Besides, I could not live with you. Why not? Grace was silent a few incidents. I go with Marty to Giles's grave. We swore we would show him that devotion, and I mean to keep it up. Well, I wouldn't mind that at all. I have no right to expect anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I like the man as well as any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to the place, and smoke as the gar on the stile while I waited till you came back. Then you haven't given up smoking. Well, no, I have thought of doing so, but his extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor Giles's frustrated ghost. I don't like you to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank with you, quite frank, I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I cannot help it, so that it would be wrong for me to join you. Fitzpiers was now uneasy. You say you're betrothed lover still, he rejoined. When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we common people say? When you were away. How could that be? Grace would have avoided this, but her neutral candour led her on. It was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about to be annulled, and then he could marry me. So I encouraged him to love me. Fitzpiers winced visibly, and yet, upon the whole, she was right in telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute sincerity kept always affectionate admiration for her under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him would have brought him no sorrow, but she so far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words, although the object of her high regard was no more. It's rough upon me that, he said bitterly. Oh, Grace, I did not know you tried to get rid of me. I suppose it is of no use, but I ask, cannot you hope to find a little love in your heart for me again? If I could, I would oblige you, but I fear I cannot. She replied with illogical ruefulness. And I don't see why you should mind my having had one lover beside yourself in my life, when you have had so many. But I can tell you honestly, that I love you better than all of them put together. And that's what you will not tell me. I am sorry, but I fear I cannot, she said, sighing again. I wonder if you ever will. He looked musing me into her indistinct face, as if he would read the future there. Now have pity and tell me, will you try? To love you again? Yes, if you can. I don't know how to reply, she answered her embarrassment proving her truth. Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you or not seeing you? Certainly. Have I given you any ground for you to doubt my first promise in that respect? She was obliged to admit that he had not. Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave, said he, with playful sadness. It has been there a long time. She faintly shook her head, but said, I will try to think of you more, if I can. With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied. And he asked her when she would meet him again. As we arranged in a fortnight, if it must be a fortnight it must. This time at least. I'll consider by the day I see you again if I can shorten the interval. Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at your window. You must do what you like about that. Good night. Say, husband. She seemed almost inclined to give him the word, but exclaiming, No, no, I cannot, slipped through the garden hedge and disappeared. Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not result in seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval, which she had herself marked out as proper. At these times, however, she punctually appeared. And as the spring wore on, the meetings were kept up, though the character changed but little with the increase in their number. The small garden of the cottage, occupied by the Tang's family, father, son, and now son's wife, aligned with the larger one of the timber dealers at its upper end, and when young Tim, after leaving work at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass along the outside track before mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the garden's one after another as he proceeded. For Fitzpiers did not now wish to leave the absorbing spot too quickly after travelling so far to reach it, hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take to his arms anew. Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they bolded. It was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular sentimental revival in Fitzpiers's heart, the fineness of tissue which could take a deep emotional, almost also an artistic pleasure, in being the yearning in amorato of a woman he once had deserted, would have seemed an absurdity to the young sore. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated, therefore the question of affection as between them was settled. But his Suki had, since that meeting on their marriage day, repentently admitted to the urgency of his questioning to a good deal concerning her past levities. Putting all things together he could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers's mysterious visits to this spot with Suki's residence under his roof, but he made himself fairly easy. The vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month, and then Suki would be out of Fitzpiers's way for ever. The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived. They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim's father, after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the hold having already been sent away. The fire-light shone upon Suki's fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and upon the face of Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his father's house, which he was beholding that night almost for the last time. Tim Tang's was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him from his father, for old Tang's would on no account leave Hintock, and had it not been for Suki's reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the last moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part of the room he regarded her moodily and the fire and the boxes. One thing he had particularly noticed this evening, she was very restless, fitful in her actions, unable to remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed. Sorry that he be going after all, Suki, he said. She sighed involuntarily. I don't know but that I be, she answered. It is natural, isn't it, when one is going away? It were you wasn't born here as I was. No. There's folks left behind that you'd faint have wee, I reckon. Why do you think that? I've seen things and have heard things, and Suki, I say it will be a good move for me to get you away. I don't mind his leave in the broad, but I do mind him at home. Suki's face was not changed from its aspect of listess indifference by the words. She answered nothing, and shortly afterwards he went out for his customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden. The restlessness of Suki had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman of Tim's suspicions, but in a different, and it must be added injustice to her, more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from her doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that this evening was a favourite one of the seven for his journey. As she was going next day to leave the country, Suki thought that there could be no great harm in giving way to a little sentimentality by obtaining a glimpse of him, quite unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus taking a silent last farewell. Aware that Fitzpiers's time for passing was at hand, she thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner therefore had Tim left the room than she let herself noise at the out of the house and hasten to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the surgeon's transit across the scene if he had not already gone by. Her light-cutting dress was visible to Tim, lounging in the arbor of the opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily climb into the hedge, and so ensconced herself there that nobody could have the least doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a pass or by. He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suki started, having in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She had once descended from the hedge. So he is coming to-night, said Tim laconically, and we be always anxious to see our dares. He is coming to-night, she replied with defiance, and we be anxious for our dares. Then will you step indoors, where your dare will soon join me. We have to muster by half past three to-morrow, and if we don't get to bed by eight at least, our faces will be as long as clock cases all day. She hesitated for a moment, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down the garden to the house, where he heard the door latch click behind her. Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total failure, a source of bitter regret, the only cause for improving his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might not be a very effectual one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was likely to be overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his resentment gathered force. He craved a means of striking one blow back at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was still on the scene of his discomforture. For some minutes no method suggested itself, and then he had an idea. Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formally been the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground, the roof-eaves of the Linhe were within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate. Ah! I thought my memory didn't deceive me, he lipped silently. With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object, curiously framed an iron, which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length, and half as wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand. That'll spoil his pretty shame, for I reckon, said he. It was a man-trap. End of chapter 46