dead
also?"

"Dead--SHE dead?" exclaimed Grace.

"Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is."

"Never!" said Grace, vehemently.

He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I came back to try to
make it up with you--but--"

Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward
with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not
despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She
was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the
young man's.

"Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her husband.

"Yes."

"Since his fevered state set in?"

"Yes."

"On his lips?"

"Yes."

"Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as
possible." He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer
it to her.

Grace shook her head.

"If you don't do as I tell you you may soon be like him."

"I don't care. I wish to die."

"I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge
beside him. "The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my head
at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send
somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I
suppose I shall be bound to tell him?"

"Certainly."

Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in
the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and
weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor
Giles's features, and went towards the door where her husband had
stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only
perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which,
like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level where
indented by the pressure of her husband's receding footsteps. It
reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect;
the extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was
wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been
superadded. She returned to Winterborne's side, and during her
meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room,
and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was.

"What--Marty!" said Grace.

"Yes. I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its
girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have
bruised her.

"He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily.