The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave her. “Well, then, to put this case before you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day,” said she, when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion.
“For no other reason at all?” he asked, ruefully.
“It was nearly the whole.”
They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, “And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.”
Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection.
“It is a different kind of love altogether,” said he. “Less passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed by closer observation. ‘Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.’”
“That’s out of Measure for Measure,” said she, slyly.
“Oh yes—I meant it as a citation,” blandly replied Fitzpiers. “Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?”
The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of Winterborne. “Don’t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,” she replied, stanchly.
“Mine is with you—in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that.”