day, and the reddleman, still loving
her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical
juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as
hitherto, sighing and holding aloof. After what had happened it was
impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of Wildeve's intentions.
But her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets
Venn determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way. That this
way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward
enough; but the reddleman's love was generous.

His first active step in watching over Thomasin's interests was taken
about seven o'clock the next evening and was dictated by the news which
he had learnt from the sad boy. That Eustacia was somehow the cause
of Wildeve's carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been
Venn's conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them. It did
not occur to his mind that Eustacia's love signal to Wildeve was the
tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her
grandfather had brought home. His instinct was to regard her as a
conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to Thomasin's
happiness.

During the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of
Thomasin, but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which
he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. He
had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point
in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a
nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to
mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one. After
this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and,
it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly
bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow.

He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain. Nobody except
himself came near the spot that night.

But the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman.
He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain
mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations,
without which preface they would give cause for alarm.

The same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but
Eustacia and Wildeve, the expected trysters, did not appear.

He pursued precisely the same c