The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in
question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of
Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life.
Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually
could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a
drive through the wood that fine night.
Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but said
that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers.
They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the
stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of
them alike in another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal
bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged
diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at
roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him
that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he.
Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time: "Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood--a very attractive
girl--with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her
gloves?"
Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught
the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessaries. With a
wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the
circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, "I saw a young lady
talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she."
Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking
over the hedge. "It might have been," he said. "She is quite a
gentlewoman--the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in
Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one."
"She is not staying at Hintock House?"
"No; it is closed."
"Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farmhouses?"
"Oh no--you mistake. She was a different sort of girl altogether." As
Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophized
the night in continuation: "'She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
One impulse of her being--in her lightness
Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,
To nourish some far desert: she did seem
Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark stream.'"