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When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it the

postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that

Fitzpiers ithin a mile of her still She felt relieved that he

did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever

its nature idity of his

communication quenched in her the incipient spark that events had

kindled so shortly before

From this centre of inforone away, and as none but the Melbury household are

that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitee

Thus the early days of May passed by None but the nocturnal birds and

ani, towards the ure, with a crutch under one arm and a

stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the

shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the

nearest point of the turnpike-road The uised that his oould hardly have known him Felice

Charht be; and

she had done her ut Fitzpiers with the old

materials of her art in the recesses of the lue, which conveyed him to

Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south

coast, and immediately crossed the Channel

But it was known to everybody that three days after this ti out for a long term

of travel and residence on the Continent She went off oneas

unostentatiously as could be, and took no ed one to meet her at a point farther on in her route