congratulated
himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than
the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye.

Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her
husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her
dressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly,
heard her descend, and came to the stair-head.

"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said.

"Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at
Owlscombe in White Hart Vale."

"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just afore
bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then."

"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace. "Never mind me; he
will soon be home. I expect him about one."

She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One
o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it
passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn
she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their
lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. She
remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she
noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of
hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustling
about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his
wares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and
so on--upon one of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fair
for him every year out of neighborly kindness.

The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her
husband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock. She could
hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a
later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at
Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half.
What, then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of
the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.

She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of
advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men's
faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.

"Edgar is not come," she said. "And I have reason to know that he's
not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this.
I was going to the top of the hill to look for hi