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 cost 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 devilry 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 bough from an adjoining tree was swayed 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 a 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 then, 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 ripe
autumn's brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice;
she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it
had been feebler, stiffer, more like t