Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed
and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the
house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter
Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.
This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared
likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there
was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might
become real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continue
long enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed her
mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately
hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied
by the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that
had little to do with living and doing.
As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. A
feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time,
the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire
virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of
his languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for a
medical man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about his
home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with his
own hands. So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace's
pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She received a
letter from Fitzpiers.
Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the
gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with
toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she had
almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote briefly
and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he was
living quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be
together, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He therefore
purported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he
named, which she found to be three days after the time of her present
reading.
He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which
her father would understand even better than herself. As the only
alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when it
arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour before
midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join him
there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediately
the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his
continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention
of showing himself on land at all.