had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew
her appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of
being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness.
She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a
tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to
tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but
was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he
saw that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the
gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open
the obstacle without touching it at all.

He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing
her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable
to identify. Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had
seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the
contrast offered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.

Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of
seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered
that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot
she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody
staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard
so much--at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to
set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky.

Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be
that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man,
except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the
discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained
in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not
constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However,
when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the
direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been
walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that
day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be
seen, returning by another route.

Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the
manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The
mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond
had gone away and that nobody