She could hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs.Charmond at Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half.
What, then, had become of him?
That he had been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.
She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men's faces wan.

As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.
"Edgar is not come," she said.

"And I have reason to know that he's not attending anybody.

He has had no rest for two nights before this.
I was going to the top of the hill to look for him." "I'll come with you," said Melbury.
She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and did not like the look of it.

Telling the men he would be with them again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley.