not a hare, 'twas louder. Hark!"

"Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim. "How be you going to wake at
half-past three else?"

She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and
listened. Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of
the various species of trees around the premises he could hear the
twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-trap.
But further human sound there was none.

Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated
upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an
answer, for Hintock was dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he
would be out of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes.
He closed the window and lay down.

The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been
operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father's house the
minute of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated
on many things. Should she inform her father before going out that the
estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he had
imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If she did so she
must in some measure become the apologist of her husband, and she was
not prepared to go so far.

As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly
had changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his
manner towards her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and
worthy husband yet? She had married him; there was no getting over
that; and ought she any longer to keep him at a distance? His suave
deference to her lightest whim on the question of his comings and
goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a little independence,
was a trait in his character as unexpected as it was engaging. If she
had been his empress, and he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a
more sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will.

Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the
marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled
at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn
promises she had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago.

She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's conscience
might be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of
their force. That particular sentence, beginning "Whom God hath joined
together,"