our young
neighbour Tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman,
he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery."

"Ah, my life!" said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips
so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it
a similar scarlet fire. "You think too much of my influence over
men-folk indeed, reddleman. If I had such a power as you imagine I
would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been
kind to me--which Thomasin Yeobright has not particularly, to my
knowledge."

"Can it be that you really don't know of it--how much she had always
thought of you?"

"I have never heard a word of it. Although we live only two miles
apart I have never been inside her aunt's house in my life."

The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn that thus far
he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to
unmask his second argument.

"Well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power, I assure
you, Miss Vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman."

She shook her head.

"Your comeliness is law with Mr. Wildeve. It is law with all men who
see 'ee. They say, 'This well-favoured lady coming--what's her name?
How handsome!' Handsomer than Thomasin Yeobright," the reddleman
persisted, saying to himself, "God forgive a rascal for lying!" And
she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. There
was a certain obscurity in Eustacia's beauty, and Venn's eye was not
trained. In her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle,
which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest
neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling
splendour.

Eustacia could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered
her dignity thereby. "Many women are lovelier than Thomasin," she
said, "so not much attaches to that."

The reddleman suffered the wound and went on: "He is a man who
notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like
withywind, if you only had the mind."

"Surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him I cannot do
living up here away from him."

The reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. "Miss Vye!" he
said.

"Why do you say that--as if you doubted me?" She spoke faintly, and
her breathing was quick. "The idea of your speaking in that tone to
me!" she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. "What could have been
in yo