d misery with her sorrow.

Six months before this date a 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 energies,
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's 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, and 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 rains 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 f