It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which

Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having

taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary.

Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought

that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief

rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the

chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting

her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in

Winterborne's death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one

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professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As

for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which

at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to

admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself

as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more

serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory.

Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it,

Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two

conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be

the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty

South accompanying her.

Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's

so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting

of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures

that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his

early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and

named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned.

A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the

well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements

in their lives during his residence at Hintock.

The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret

that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future,

the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a

permanent dwelling-place.

He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her

slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was

complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least

reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have

made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose

between living with him and without him.




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