The Woodlanders

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.