Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of

seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered

that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot

she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody

staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard

so much--at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to

set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky.

Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be

that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man,

except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the

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discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained

in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not

constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However,

when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the

direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been

walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that

day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be

seen, returning by another route.

Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the

manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The

mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond

had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a

vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom

he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass

from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward.

Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient

about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in

his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven

his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a

mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove

himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook,

or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to

little boys to hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well

earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind

that wore out the patience of the little boys.

On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers

had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent

perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a

particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in

the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated

the solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skilful with the

reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths

of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone

might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any

countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of

treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the

journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates.




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