much as he deplored it;
moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a
great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed
and trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as he supposed)
to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were the place she had gone
to, forbearing all inquiry which the strangeness of her departure would
have made natural. A few months before this time a performance by
Grace of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to
unwonted investigation.

It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers's
domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs.
Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon's
re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and
nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a
plan of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to
be explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was
deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a
dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could
with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from
calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for
One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done.

CHAPTER XLIII.

She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached
the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his
hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that
agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a
time.

Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things
but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more
than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her
comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of
caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps
without; she knew whose footsteps they were.

Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's
hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself
and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he
dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely
enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted
almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her