Chapter 40

CHAPTER XL.

Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be
suppressed and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed
herself outside the house, never outside the garden; for she
feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and that she could
not bear.

This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun
appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had
learned that there was one possibility in which her formerly
imagined position might become real, and only one; that her
husband's absence should continue long enough to amount to
positive desertion. But she never allowed her mind to dwell much
upon the thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a
result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock
which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had little
to do with living and doing.

As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut. A
feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some
time, the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to
acquire virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a
soul knew of his languor, and he did not think the case serious
enough to send for a medical man. After a few days he was better
again, and crept about his home in a great coat, attending to his
simple wants as usual with his own hands. So matters stood when
the limpid inertion of Grace's pool-like existence was disturbed
as by a geyser. She received a letter from Fitzpiers.

Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the
gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him
with toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she
had almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote
briefly and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her
that he was living quite alone, and had been led to think that
they ought to be together, if she would make up her mind to
forgive him. He therefore purported to cross the Channel to
Budmouth by the steamer on a day he named, which she found to be
three days after the time of her present reading.

He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons,
which her father would understand even better than herself. As
the only alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer
when it arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an
hour before midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might
require; join him there, and pass with him into the twin vessel,
which left immediately the other entered the harbor; returning
thus with him to his continental dwelling-place, which he did not
name. He had no intention of showing himself on land at all.

The