red a little he said, "You are now, as ever,
Fitzpiers's wife. I was deluded. He has not done you ENOUGH harm.
You are still subject to his beck and call."

"Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignified
sorrow. "I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most." She
stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed
Melbury still more. "I don't mind at all what comes to me," Grace
continued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I
cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have
done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you."

"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury.

"No," said she. "He could not have known it. His behavior to me
proved that he did not know."

Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of
her chamber.

Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the
dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His
love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection
contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to
suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she
mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she
blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her.

CHAPTER XL.

Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed
and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the
house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter
Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.

This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared
likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there
was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might
become real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continue
long enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed her
mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately
hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied
by the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that
had little to do with living and doing.

As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. A
feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time,
the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire
virulence with the prostrat