encircled that man might be her misery. How could she allow
herself to become so infatuated with a stranger? And to fill the
cup of her sorrow there would be Thomasin, living day after day in
inflammable proximity to him; for she had just learnt that, contrary
to her first belief, he was going to stay at home some considerable
time.

She reached the wicket at Mistover Knap, but before opening it she
turned and faced the heath once more. The form of Rainbarrow stood
above the hills, and the moon stood above Rainbarrow. The air was
charged with silence and frost. The scene reminded Eustacia of a
circumstance which till that moment she had totally forgotten. She
had promised to meet Wildeve by the Barrow this very night at eight,
to give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement.

She herself had fixed the evening and the hour. He had probably come
to the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed.

"Well, so much the better: it did not hurt him," she said serenely.
Wildeve had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked
glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest
facility.

She remained deeply pondering; and Thomasin's winning manner towards
her cousin arose again upon Eustacia's mind.

"O that she had been married to Damon before this!" she said. "And
she would if it hadn't been for me! If I had only known--if I had only
known!"

Eustacia once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and,
sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder,
entered the shadow of the roof. She threw off her trappings in the
out-house, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber.

VII

A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness

The old captain's prevailing indifference to his granddaughter's
movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so
happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why
she had walked out so late.

"Only in search of events, grandfather," she said, looking out of the
window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much
force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed.

"Search of events--one would think you were one of the bucks I knew at
one-and-twenty."

"It is so lonely here."

"So much the better. If I were living in a town my whole time would
be taken up in looking after you. I fully expected you would have
been home when I returned from the Woman."