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
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.