Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII.

It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock,
always soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason
of her strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife
who kept the house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of
the doctor's room the housewife glanced in, and imagining
Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few
minutes while she should go and find him, believing him to be
somewhere on the premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat
down close to the door.

As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room,
and started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the
couch, like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb
of the fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means
clasped in prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor.
Awaken him herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to
go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at
one side of the fireplace. But expecting the landlady to re-enter
in a moment she abandoned this intention, and stood gazing in
great embarrassment at the reclining philosopher.

The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he
probably appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation;
but the light abstracted from his material presence by sleep was
more than counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that
state, in a stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so
sensitive. So far as she could criticise at all, she became aware
that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual
in that locality. The occasions on which Grace had observed men
of this stamp were when she had been far removed away from
Hintock, and even then such examples as had met her eye were at a
distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one who now
confronted her.

She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her
mistake and returned, and went again towards the bell-pull.
Approaching the chimney her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could
see him in the glass. An indescribable thrill passed through her
as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image were open,
gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of
the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn
her head and regard the original. However, by an effort she did
turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before.

Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was
sufficient to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She
crossed quickly to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and
went out of the house unobserved. By the time that she had gone