oots. The artifices of the
seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and
not from that of the spectator's.

"He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the world!"
said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above
strain.

Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and years together,
ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to me was love;
nor I to him."

"Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew--not even
my father, though he came nearest knowing--the tongue of the trees and
fruits and flowers themselves."

She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard
core to her grief--which Marty's had not--remained. Had she been sure
that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have
driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare
possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was
inevitable. She longed to believe that it had not done even this.

There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be
at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it
would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and
Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that
followed her flight; and in withdrawing her original defiant
announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness she did not care to
show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a
clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the
correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her
present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of.

It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been
already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace's fidelity could
not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest
concerning her by her avowal of the contrary.

He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full
compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it
may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a
smouldering admiration of her.

He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which
he had retired--quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have
known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living
creature, how much soever he might have wronged her. Then a su