to rub it out. I didn't tell you to. I meant to
let it stay a little longer."

"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured.

As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was
unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from
his mind.

From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne,
though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the
background of human life and action thereabout--a feat not particularly
difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a
lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no
further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly
launched was stranded and lost.

CHAPTER XVI.

Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less
pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the
timber-merchant's. The latter had, without doubt, been once the
manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little
Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with
others of its kind into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though
the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every
reason to believe--at least so the parson said that the owners of that
little manor had been Melbury's own ancestors, the family name
occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the
time of the civil wars.

Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and
comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied
still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival
in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front
rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants,
and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome
addition to their income.

The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that
they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of
William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a
door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the
door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of
the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house
front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the path were
first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberr