“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively.
“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as much matter-of-fact as he could summon.
“About my getting to Exbury?” she said.
“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, “that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist—such as make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a day or two I am busy here.” He was hoping that by the time mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. “I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?”
She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, “and that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to stay.”
“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. “Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced treatment of you—dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you—what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay.”
The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only infringement—if infringement it could be called—of his predetermined bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not see her tears.
She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since go she must.
He replied, yearningly, “I—I don’t like you to go away.”