Slowly he dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was.

Strangely enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was personal.

Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was forgotten.

The first look that possessed her face was relief; satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that did not interfere with her words.
"Is he dying--is there any hope ?" she cried.
"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic character--though that was striking enough to a man who called himself the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its character as the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.
"Is he in great danger--can you save him ?" she cried again.
Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined Winterborne as he stood.

His inspection was concluded in a mere glance.