It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between

Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from

London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired

carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his

refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of

those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born.

His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it

seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly

dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the

irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very

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door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of

his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of

his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first--a

letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To

bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had

decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the

Continent.

The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which coincides

with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--a period

following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the

barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the

force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest.

Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were

deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales

would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the Mother of the Months"

was in her most attenuated phase--starved and bent to a mere bowed

skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers's

company.

When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-room.

He found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for

his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to

receive him. On descending to the other wing of the house and

inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had

gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days

earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached her father of her

being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to

see her.

Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now

lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the

entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on

the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the

fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers

considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more

accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went

desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down,

and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of

smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's chimney, signifying that the

young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper.




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