"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with

indignant sorrow. "I divide you from your husband, indeed! You little

think--"

He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the

encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely

in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and

he forbore. "You had better lie down. You are tired," he said,

soothingly. "Good-night."

The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken

only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's stables. Despite

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her father's advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came.

It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night. She

thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot

Winterborne.

"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to herself.

"How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is

attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas

might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show

of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a

love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly.

But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken

about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on

stumps of underwood with impunity. Had the old man been able to watch

Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and

walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not

proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and,

raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down.




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