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Chapter 20

25 May 2023

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The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury’s garden dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves.

Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the hour grew later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant’s premises was not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful time.

Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden gate–where he now looked more frequently than into his books–fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance–which he had hitherto deemed an impossibility–he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the ordinary village girls in a group–some steadily walking, some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance; saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed.

The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury’s and Marty South’s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones.

In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction.

Passing Winterborne’s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired; and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly.

When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the moon.

He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former conversed in low tones.

“If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they’ll come as one,” said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. “Instead of my skellington he’ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though she’s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.”

Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation, it being now about midnight.

“Directly we see anything we’ll run home as fast as we can,” said one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around.

“I wish we had not thought of trying this,” said another, “but had contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and hearing our husbands’ trades. It is too much like having dealings with the Evil One to try to raise their forms.”

However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers, stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world’s history. She was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered words, one of the girls–a bouncing maiden, plighted to young Timothy Tangs–asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of the rest.

Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty: “Why didn’t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?”

“I don’t believe in it,” said Marty, shortly.

“Why, half the parish is here–the silly hussies should have kept it quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o’ Providence sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they’ll bundle back home–along like hares. I’ve seen such larries before.”

“Do you think I’d better?” said Marty, reluctantly.

“Oh yes, he’ll bless ye for it.”

“I don’t want that kind of blessing.” But after a moment’s thought she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which Grace would have to return.

Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on Grammer’s idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately discerned what her husband had not–that Grace was rapidly fascinating the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.

“You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,” she said to him, significantly. “She will run down through that opening much faster than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.”

Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his dismissal.

Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon’s manoeuvre, and, still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and “tole” her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing.

The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury’s encouragement and the sentiment of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had been a bird.

“Oh!” cried Grace, in her fright.

“You are in my arms, dearest,” said Fitzpiers, “and I am going to claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!”

She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, “Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?”

“Certainly,” he said, laughing; “as soon as you have recovered.”

She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away. But it had been enough–new relations between them had begun.

The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her, Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace–a fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she said, with playful effrontery, “May’st kiss me if ‘canst catch me, Tim!”

Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began racing away he started in pursuit.

On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a changed one–a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon.

Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks.

Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding- place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume:

“O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.”

In a minute or two he uncovered her.

“Oh, ’tis not Tim!” said she, burying her face.

Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on the next hay-cock, panting with his race.

“Whom do you mean by Tim?” he asked, presently.

“My young man, Tim Tangs,” said she.

“Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?”

“I did at first.”

“But you didn’t at last?”

“I didn’t at last.”

“Do you much mind that it was not?”

“No,” she answered, slyly.

Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least. In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist. 

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Articles
The Woodlanders
4.5
The Woodlanders, novel by Thomas Hardy, published serially in Macmillan's Magazine from 1886 to 1887 and in book form in 1887. The work is a pessimistic attack on a society that values high status and socially sanctioned behaviour over good character and honest emotions.
1

Chapter 1

23 May 2023
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The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during th

2

Chapter 2

23 May 2023
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In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand

3

Chapter 3

23 May 2023
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The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; t

4

Chapter 4

23 May 2023
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There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already bestir

5

Chapter 5

23 May 2023
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Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride i

6

Chapter 6

23 May 2023
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Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their little experiences of the same homeward journey. As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell upon them, the y

7

Chapter 7

23 May 2023
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Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver’s skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to the morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blo

8

Chapter 8

23 May 2023
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The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. He

9

Chapter 9

24 May 2023
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“I heard the bushes move long before I saw you,” she began. “I said first, ‘it is some terrible beast;’ next, ‘it is a poacher;’ next, ‘it is a friend!'” He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing

10

Chapter 10

24 May 2023
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Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the oven, laid on a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in Flemish “Last Suppers.” Creedle and the boy fetched and carried

11

Chapter 11

24 May 2023
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“‘Tis a pity–a thousand pities!” her father kept saying next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom. But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at this stage

12

Chapter 12

24 May 2023
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It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour’s leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh

13

Chapter 13

24 May 2023
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The news was true. The life–the one fragile life–that had been used as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It was the last of a group of lives which had served this pu

14

Chapter 14

24 May 2023
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The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne’s mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in

15

Chapter 15

24 May 2023
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When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked thoughtfully about the premises. On South’s own account he was genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne’s he was the more grieved in th

16

Chapter 16

24 May 2023
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Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the timber-merchant’s. The latter had, without doubt, been once the

17

Chapter 17

25 May 2023
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Grace’s exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the house that day–nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a wom

18

Chapter 18

25 May 2023
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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 k

19

Chapter 19

25 May 2023
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Instead of resuming his investigation of South’s brain, which perhaps was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers recli

20

Chapter 20

25 May 2023
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The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green

21

Chapter 21

25 May 2023
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When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them all to fly. She said with solemn breathlessness that they ha

22

Chapter 22

25 May 2023
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The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers’s door; a voice that he knew sounded in the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a pa

23

Chapter 23

25 May 2023
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With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he wished to say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the top of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the cider

24

Chapter 24

25 May 2023
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He left her at the door of her father’s house. As he receded, and was clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man who hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, gr

25

Chapter 25

26 May 2023
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The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to th

26

Chapter 26

26 May 2023
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Winterborne’s house had been pulled down. On this account his face had been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business c

27

Chapter 27

26 May 2023
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The doctor’s professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was

28

Chapter 28

26 May 2023
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A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways. Grace observed,

29

Chapter 29

26 May 2023
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She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar on

30

Chapter 30

26 May 2023
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Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the present, therefore, he simply watched. The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost a miraculous change i

31

Chapter 31

26 May 2023
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As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the woodmen’s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown t

32

Chapter 32

26 May 2023
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At nine o’clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once b

33

Chapter 33

27 May 2023
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There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time–one o’clock– that Grace discovered her father’s absence from the house after a depa

34

Chapter 34

27 May 2023
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It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a

35

Chapter 35

27 May 2023
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The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and then

36

Chapter 36

27 May 2023
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Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that night. Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she

37

Chapter 37

27 May 2023
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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 was within a mile of her still. she felt relieved that he

38

Chapter 38

27 May 2023
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At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety. Only a few short mont

39

Chapter 39

27 May 2023
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All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that they could never be happy together, even should she be free

40

Chapter 40

27 May 2023
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Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might enc

41

Chapter 41

29 May 2023
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The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily. “This i

42

Chapter 42

29 May 2023
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The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight o’clock struck, and she had remembered that he had not come t

43

Chapter 43

29 May 2023
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She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her

44

Chapter 44

29 May 2023
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Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some statements in which the words “feverish symptoms” occurred.

45

Chapter 45

29 May 2023
0
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Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk

46

Chapter 46

29 May 2023
0
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The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodic

47

Chapter 47

29 May 2023
0
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Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if

48

Chapter 48

29 May 2023
0
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All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, “I wonder where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know her bide out like this! She surely said she was going into

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