Chapter 37

CHAPTER XXXVII.

When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it
the postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind
that Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. she felt relieved
that he did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her
father, whatever its nature might have been; but the general
frigidity of his communication quenched in her the incipient spark
that events had kindled so shortly before.

From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that
the doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household
was aware that he did not return on the night of his accident, no
excitement manifested itself in the village.

Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal
birds and animals observed that late one evening, towards the
middle of the month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under
one arm and a stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House
across the lawn to the shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow
and laborious walk to the nearest point of the turnpike-road. The
mysterious personage was so disguised that his own wife would
hardly have known him. Felice Charmond was a practised hand at
make-ups, as well she might be; and she had done her utmost in
padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old materials of her art
in the recesses of the lumber-room.

In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed
him to Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on
the south coast, and immediately crossed the Channel.

But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.
Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long
term of travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one
morning as unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with
her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther
on in her route. After that, Hintock House, so frequently
deserted, was again to be let. Spring had not merged in summer
when a clinching rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached
the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers had been
seen together in Baden, in relations which set at rest the
question that had agitated the little community ever since the
winter.

Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than
Grace. His spirit seemed broken.

But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here,
as he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition
expressed largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice
formerly familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock--
once a promising lawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been
called the cleverest fellow