Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even approximated in intensity to this.
"Oh, my own--my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven--it is too much, this!" he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessaries of her he deplored.
The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was.
Right and left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful in outline, noticeably strange.
She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin retained.
"Don't be grieved about me--don't, dear Edgar!" she exclaimed, rushing up and bending over him. "I am not hurt a bit! I was coming on to find you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; and I hid away, because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the person might be."
Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her passionately.
"You are not dead!--you are not hurt! Thank God--thank God!" he said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of his apprehension. "Grace, my wife, my love, how is this--what has happened?"
"I was coming on to you," she said as distinctly as she could in the half-smothered state of her face against his. "I was trying to be as punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along the path very swiftly--fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed between these trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind with a noise, and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell to the ground. I screamed with terror, thinking it was a man lying down there to murder me, but the next moment I discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were caught in a trap. I pulled this way and that, but the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know what to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished nobody to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away."
"It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace."
"Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning to realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility. "Oh, Edgar, there has been an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!"
He continued to press his face to hers. "You are mine--mine again now."
She gently owned that she supposed she was. "I heard what you said when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I know that a man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard for me. But how does this awful thing come here?"
"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile, and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get my skirt out nobody would know anything about it," that he bestirred himself.