Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There

was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his

thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to

be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet--erratic,

inapprehensible, untraceable.

Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she

firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she

knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair,

exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could I?"

Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now,

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though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom

from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been

fully understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely

juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it

added something that was little short of reverence to the deep

affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of

Aphrodite in her constitution.

All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express

her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought

her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his

perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged

his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house

that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way

alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the

cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow.

Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical

parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of

persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly

like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference,

though a woman's devotion had been common to both.

Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies,

saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she

would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to

herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a

possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was fatal to her

own concealment; but even had the chance of benefiting him been less

than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake. The question

was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near?

There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man

who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the brain most

likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to

be brought to the sick Giles's side. The attempt should be made.




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