The butterfly had closed his wings for the last time, and clung feebly, half reversed, to his snowdrop.

A tiny trembling had laid hold upon him.

He was tasting death.
Fay shivered involuntarily, and drew her fur cloak around her.
"I must go in," she said.
They walked slowly to the wooden, ivied gate which separated the woods from the gardens.

A thin, white moon was already up, peering at them above the gathering sea mist.
They stood a moment together by the gate, each vaguely conscious of the consolation of the other's presence in the face of the great grief which had drawn them together.
"I will come again soon, if I may," he said diffidently, "unless seeing me reminds you of painful things." His voice had lowered itself involuntarily.
"I like to see you," said Fay in a whisper, and she slipped away from him like a shadow among the shadows.
The entire dejection of her voice and manner sheared from her words any possible reassurance which Wentworth might otherwise have found in them, which he suddenly felt anxious to find in them.
He pondered over them as he rode home.
How she had loved her husband! People had hinted that they had not been a happily assorted couple, but it was obvious that her grief at his loss was still overwhelming.

And what courageous affection she had shown towards Michael, whom she had known from a boy; first in trying to shield him when he had taken refuge in her room, and afterwards in her sorrowing compassion for his fate.