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 pensive¹ intramural existence of the self-constituted nun² appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there was one possibility in which her formerly³ 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 deliberately⁴ hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock which followed its avowal⁵ 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 feverish⁶ indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire virulence⁷ with the prostration⁸ of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his languor⁹, 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 limpid¹⁰ 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

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