The Woodlanders

"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically.

She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and

related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come

upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had

betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was

undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her

in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears

as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his

death was upon her.

Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her

narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade

with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so

grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had

been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he

declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He

thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her

favor. Winterborne's apparent strength, during the last months of his

life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a

first attack of that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was

a physiological mendacity.

The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her

knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the

assurances Fitzpiers gave her. "Well, then, to put this case before

you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented

to come here to-day," said she, when he had reached the aforesaid

conclusion.

"For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully.

"It was nearly the whole."

They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding

in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice,

"And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life."

Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate

lips as if to keep them in subjection.

"It is a different kind of love altogether," said he. "Less

passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material

conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and

goodness, as revealed by closer observation. 'Love talks with better

knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.'"

"That's out of 'Measure for Measure,'" said she, slyly.

"Oh yes--I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitzpiers. "Well,

then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?"