"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically.
She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and
related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come
upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had
betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was
undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her
in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears
as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his
death was upon her.
Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her
narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade
with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so
grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had
been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he
declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He
thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her
favor. Winterborne's apparent strength, during the last months of his
life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a
first attack of that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was
a physiological mendacity.
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?"