devoted occasions? weary as she was she
went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor,
then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her
cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night. The
white railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray
from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood--just where he had told
her it would be found. She shuddered. It was almost too much to bear
in one day--but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and
returned to the house.

The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than
two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized
bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of,
she took her leave of him, and locked him in.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it the
postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that
Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he
did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever
its nature might have been; but the general frigidity of his
communication quenched in her the incipient spark that events had
kindled so shortly before.

From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the
doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware
that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitement
manifested itself in the village.

Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and
animals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the
month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a
stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the
shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the
nearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious personage was so
disguised that his own wife would hardly have known him. Felice
Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; and
she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old
materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room.

In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to
Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south
coast, and immediately crossed the Channel.

But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.
Charmond executed her long-deferred