Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. "Have you lived here long?"
said he.
Grace was wild with sorrow--with all that had befallen her--with
the cruelties that had attacked her--with life--with Heaven. She
answered at random. "Yes. By what right do you ask?"
"Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly. "It is
for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as
you feel, that I am a vagabond--a brute--not worthy to possess the
smallest fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to
take sufficient interest in you to make that inquiry."
"He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband,
and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where
she kept it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle
touches, as if she were stroking a little bird.
He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where
his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had
brought.
"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already
humiliated almost to the depths.
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