She found abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton.

When the meal was ready, she put what he required outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself.
It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall.
As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was.

The morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder should discover her.

Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.
The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and drip of the leafage.

Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains.
Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the living-room, she could see various small members of the animal community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff, and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures, jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters.