"Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr.
Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was
obliged to run off."
"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your
predictions can't be worth much."
"I have not altered it."
"But you have."
"No."
"It is altered. Go and see."
She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he
would KEEP his Grace. Marty came back surprised.
"Well, I never," she said. "Who can have made such nonsense of it?"
"Who, indeed?" said he.
"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone."
"You'd no business to rub it out. I didn't tell you to. I meant to
let it stay a little longer."
"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured.
As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was
unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from
his mind.
From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne,
though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the
background of human life and action thereabout--a feat not particularly
difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a
lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no
further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly
launched was stranded and lost.