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.
Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were deserted.

It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the Mother of the Months" was in her most attenuated phase--starved and bent to a mere bowed skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers's company.
When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-room.
He found it deserted, and without a fire.

He had mentioned no day for his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to receive him.

On descending to the other wing of the house and inquiring of Mrs.Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached her father of her being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to see her.
Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable.

Fitzpiers considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more accurately before leaving home in a freak like this.