. Believe me, in
spite of all you may do or feel,

Your lover always (once your husband),

"E."

It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which
Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having
taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary.
Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought
that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief
rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the
chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting
her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in
Winterborne's death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one
professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As
for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which
at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to
admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself
as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more
serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory.

Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it,
Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two
conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be
the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty
South accompanying her.

Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's
so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting
of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures
that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his
early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and
named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned.

A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the
well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements
in their lives during his residence at Hintock.

The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret
that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future,
the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a
permanent dwelling-place.

He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her
slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was
complete he