The Woodlanders

She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached

the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his

hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that

agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a

time.

Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things

but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more

than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her

comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of

caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps

without; she knew whose footsteps they were.

Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's

hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself

and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he

dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely

enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted

almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her

last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed

by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was

forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief;

satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of

the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that

did not interfere with her words.

"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried.

"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than

invocating, if not quite deprecatory.

He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic

character--though that was striking enough to a man who called himself

the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its character as

the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which

he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.

"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again.

Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined

Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere

glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the

effect of his coming words.

"He is dying," he said, with dry precision.

"What?" said she.

"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all

over. The extremities are dead already." His eyes still remained

fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his

interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.