Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed and hide-bound for a while.

Grace seldom showed herself outside the house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.
This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time.

She had learned that there was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might become real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continue long enough to amount to positive desertion.

But she never allowed her mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a result.

Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had little to do with living and doing.
As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut.