deserve it, considering how I have played with them both," he said at
last, as much to himself as to Venn. "But of all the odd things that
ever I knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own
interests as to bring this to me."

"My interests?"

"Certainly. 'Twas your interest not to do anything which would send me
courting Thomasin again, now she has accepted you--or something like
it. Mrs. Yeobright says you are to marry her. 'Tisn't true, then?"

"Good Lord! I heard of this before, but didn't believe it. When did
she say so?"

Wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done.

"I don't believe it now," cried Venn.

"Ru-um-tum-tum," sang Wildeve.

"O Lord--how we can imitate!" said Venn contemptuously. "I'll have
this out. I'll go straight to her."

Diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, Wildeve's eye passing
over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a
heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen,
Wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the
vale.

To lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved of both--was
too ironical an issue to be endured. He could only decently save
himself by Thomasin; and once he became her husband, Eustacia's
repentance, he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. It
was no wonder that Wildeve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the
scene, should have supposed Eustacia to be playing a part. To believe
that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique, to infer
that she really gave him up to Thomasin, would have required previous
knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence. Who was to
know that she had grown generous in the greediness of a new passion,
that in coveting one cousin she was dealing liberally with another,
that in her eagerness to appropriate she gave way?

Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the
proud girl, Wildeve went his way.

Meanwhile Diggory Venn had returned to his van, where he stood looking
thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista was opened up to him.
But, however promising Mrs. Yeobright's views of him might be as a
candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the
favour of Thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present
wild mode of life. In this he saw little difficulty.

He could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing Thomasin
and detailing his plan. He