Chapter 45

CHAPTER XLV.

Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by
Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she
and Marty had devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in
the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like the two mourners in
Cymbeline, sweetened his sad grave with their flowers and their
tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of
them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a
copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had
brought home to her with such force as this death how little
acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character.
While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with the
lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at
having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.

Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and
decay of the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death
of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a
marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which
followed it, through the accident of their having parted just
before under the influence of Marty South's letter--the tiny
instrument of a cause deep in nature.

Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the
fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not
have found a native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in
the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her
husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be
to blot out every vestige of her.

On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine,
in fact--a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally
promised her for that particular day a long time before.

It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where
he had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local
medical man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he
dared not set them right. He had thought fit to communicate with
her on that day of tender traditions to inquire if, in the event
of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view
elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join
him.

There the practical part ended; he then went on--

"My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear
Grace and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may
be absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have
never loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor
you at this present moment. What you told me in the pride and
haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this, by the way, was