Chapter 45 - Page 2

not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could never
have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you--no,
there is not--that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than
I say my prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often
returns upon my mind till it distracts me? If you could condescend
even only to see me again you would be breathing life into a
corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a turtledove, how came I
ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on
this lovers' day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a
little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies
whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is one in
love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.' I
will not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy
by sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any
rate, to a short interview. I will meet you and leave you as a
mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this slight means of
making a few explanations, and of putting my position before you.
Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel, Your lover
always (once your husband),

"E."

It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on
which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his
courtship having taken place under conditions which rendered
letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, therefore, had a certain
novelty for her. She thought that, upon the whole, he wrote love-
letters very well. But the chief rational interest of the letter
to the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as
he proposed would afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one
way or the other, on her actual share in Winterborne's death. The
relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one professional man who
had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As for that
statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at
the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared
to admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging
herself as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was
a far more serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory.

Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of
it, Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on
two conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting
should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not
object to Marty South accompanying her.

Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's
so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the
bursting of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the
few