It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between
Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from
London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired
carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his
refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of
those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born.

His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it
seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly
dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the
irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very
door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of
his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of
his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first--a
letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To
bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had
decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the
Continent.

The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which coincides
with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--a period
following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the
barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the
force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest.