one, she said. She would be quite strong enough,
with old Creedle as an assistant.

"Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitzpiers, referring
to Winterborne. "One who lived where he lived, and was with him when
he died."

Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances,
from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told
him of Giles's generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the
risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon
heard it he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed
a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, and went
home thoughtful, feeling that in more that one sense his journey to
Hintock had not been in vain.

He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness then. But whatever
he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be
done yet, while Giles Winterborne's memory was green. To wait was
imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her
to look on him with toleration, if not with love.

CHAPTER XLV.

Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace
in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had
devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great
Hintock, and, like the two mourners in Cymbeline, sweetened his sad
grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that
it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while,
and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes.
Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how
little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal
character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with
the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having
had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.

Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of
the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs.
Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous
escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through
the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of
Marty South's letter--the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature.

Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the
fitful fever of that impassioned wo