ourse yet four nights longer, and without
success. But on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting,
he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of
a young man ascending from the valley. They met in the little ditch
encircling the tumulus--the original excavation from which it had been
thrown up by the ancient British people.

The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Thomasin, was aroused
to strategy in a moment. He instantly left the bush and crept forward on
his hands and knees. When he had got as close as he might safely venture
without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation
of the trysting pair could not be overheard.

Near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with
large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by
Timothy Fairway, previous to the winter weather. He took two of these
as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and
shoulders, the other his back and legs. The reddleman would now have
been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing upon him
with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing. He
crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him. Had he
approached without any covering the chances are that he would not
have been perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he
burrowed underground. In this manner he came quite close to where the
two were standing.

"Wish to consult me on the matter?" reached his ears in the rich,
impetuous accents of Eustacia Vye. "Consult me? It is an indignity to
me to talk so--I won't bear it any longer!" She began weeping. "I have
loved you, and have shown you that I loved you, much to my regret; and
yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult
with me whether it would not be better to marry Thomasin. Better--of
course it would be. Marry her--she is nearer to your own position in
life than I am!"

"Yes, yes; that's very well," said Wildeve peremptorily. "But we must
look at things as they are. Whatever blame may attach to me for having
brought it about, Thomasin's position is at present much worse than
yours. I simply tell you that I am in a strait."

"But you shall not tell me! You must see that it is only harassing me.
Damon, you have not acted well; you have sunk in my opinion. You have
not valued my courtesy--the courtesy of a lady in loving you--who used
to