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Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities. "Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her.
She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of.
Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered incline, till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between them. Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell.
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.
"This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with an interest which he could not have defined. "I have had a presentiment that this mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted." The latter words were murmured to himself alone. "Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready. "I shall be asleep, probably, when you return."
A light was burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not asleep. In a moment her sympathetic voice came from behind the curtains. "Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?" Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that he was not on the instant ready with a reply. "Oh no," he said. "There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. I am going again to-morrow."
To be frank with you quite frank I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you." Fitzpiers was now uneasy. "You say your betrothed lover still," he rejoined. "When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we common people say?" "When you were away." "How could that be?"
He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the circumstances got upon old Darling, and rode rapidly after Fitzpiers.
Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence.
On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland.
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