Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

8. CHAPTER VIII. (continued)

"Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?"

"Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are not carried on by me."

"What--another student in that retreat?"

"There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great deal--I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night."

"Oh yes--a doctor--I believe I was told of him. It is a strange place for him to settle in."

"It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology and metaphysics and all sorts of subjects."

"What is his name?"

"Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from here."

"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about-- a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practise upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?"

Grace had not. "I think he is not a very old man," she added.

"Has he a wife?"

"I am not aware that he has."