our went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in
the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the
inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant
for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at
Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their
interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees
had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by
frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds in
framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such
incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the
natives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers,
and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended
having suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt
unutterably dreary.

He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The
season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her
out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become
acquainted. One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her could only,
with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a
flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into
other spheres than this.

Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which,
as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood,
being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to
read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning,
the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII.

It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always
soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her
strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer's wife who kept
the house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor's
room the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked
Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go and
find him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Grace
acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door.

As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and
started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch,
like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the
fifteenth century, except that his hands wer