Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and

yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven

o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford

her an opportunity.

She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things,

cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set

it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she

closed the door and started.

The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all

sense of darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a

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phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay

about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like

spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging

into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the

woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her

to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by

a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was

with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour's progress,

she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and

that same house, out of which she had fled a few days before in

irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things

of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of

flight and sink all regard of personal consequences.

One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as

ever--his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his

persistence equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and

fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish

with him. His freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices

had, indeed, been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance

in Hintock and its neighborhood, where people could not believe that

nature herself effected cures, and that the doctor's business was only

to smooth the way.

It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's house,

now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already

gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about

Winterborne's residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp

autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of

some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct,

and the white balls on the pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left

by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered

by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the

apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she

stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave

light to his bedchamber.




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