She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. "What are you looking at?" she asked.

"Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way," he
said.

It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that
cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further
observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in
silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of
his gaze. "Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?" she
asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne
had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the
animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect
docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too
young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these
qualities.

"Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise
crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much
shorter cuts on horseback."

He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only
since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice hitherto having
been to drive.

Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see
a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o'clock in the
evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home.
There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that
he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that
direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the
house, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her.