She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of
herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her
foregoing troubles? Alas!--old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was
possibly dying--what else could she do?
It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by
exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and
waited to see the result. The night-bell which had been fixed when
Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still remained; but as it
had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his
elopement, she did not venture to pull it now.
Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In
half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said "Yes?"
inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her
effort was now to disguise her own accents.
"Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, "a man
is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and you
must go to him at once--in all mercy!"
"I will, readily."
The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her
for a moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man
who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment
to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of professional practice
unexpectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of his soul just
now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If this, his first
summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he
would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances.
"Do you know the way?" she asked.
"Yes," said he.
"One-chimney Hut," she repeated. "And--immediately!"
"Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers.
Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without
slamming it, and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had
re-entered her father's house. How he had been able to effect a
reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty
between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce
must have been entered into, that was all she could say. But close as
the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which
banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering
track-ways.
Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of
his mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At
Grace's first remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence;
but as she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the
speaker's voice to his wife's. He had taken in such good faith the
statement of the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit
for a time because she could not at once bring her mind to be
reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually believe this comer
to be she. It was one of the features of Fitzpiers's repentant humor
at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had
made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody
had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry,
and of all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy.