ery 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
outhouse, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber.

7--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 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."

"I won't conceal what I did. I wanted an adventure, and I went with the
mummers. I played the part of the Turkish Knight."

"No, never? Ha, ha! Good gad! I didn't expect it of you, Eustacia."

"It was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. Now I
have told you--and remember it is a secret."

"Of course. But, Eustacia, you never did--ha! ha! Dammy, how 'twould
have pleased me forty years ago! But remember, no more of it, my girl.
You may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't
bother me; but no figuring in breeches again."

"You need have no fear for me, Grandpapa."

Here the conversation ceased, Eustacia's moral training never exceeding
in severity a dialogue of this sort,