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 sat as motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her
little apartment at the homestead.
Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the
landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental
distress, her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a
rush. She descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson had thought it well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending the back stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and home to her cottage.
Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed
to the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and
splitting her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own
dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for herself.
Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it—the
candles still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters
gently pulled to, so as to hide the state of the window from the
cursory glance of a servant entering the apartment. She had been
gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and nobody
seemed to have discovered her absence. Tired in body but tense in
mind, she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what
she had done.
She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now
that the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief
that Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was how she had set about doing her best to escape her passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility. If Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if she meant to withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of conscience to what she dared not name.
By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind—helped perhaps by the
anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her
fright about him—grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the
moment she was in a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, "to run mad with discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in train.
While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight
noise out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at
the window. A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He
had come to that window before; yet was it possible that he should
dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed, and in the
ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also. Then she
remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she
had not fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light
from the interior of the room might have revealed her vigil to an
observer on the lawn. How all things conspired against her
keeping faith with Grace!
The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the casement securely closed.