ysses."

"It is no use, Thomasin; it is no use. Your intention is good; but I
will not trouble you to argue. I have gone through the whole that can be
said on either side times, and many times. Clym and I have not parted
in anger; we have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel
that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and
persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O Thomasin, he was so good
as a little boy--so tender and kind!"

"He was, I know."

"I did not think one whom I called mine would grow up to treat me like
this. He spoke to me as if I opposed him to injure him. As though I
could wish him ill!"

"There are worse women in the world than Eustacia Vye."

"There are too many better that's the agony of it. It was she, Thomasin,
and she only, who led your husband to act as he did--I would swear it!"

"No," said Thomasin eagerly. "It was before he knew me that he thought
of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation."

"Very well; we will let it be so. There is little use in unravelling
that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why is it that a woman can
see from a distance what a man cannot see close? Clym must do as he
will--he is nothing more to me. And this is maternity--to give one's
best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!"

"You are too unyielding. Think how many mothers there are whose sons
have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so
deeply a case like this."

"Thomasin, don't lecture me--I can't have it. It is the excess above
what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not
be greater in their case than in mine--they may have foreseen the
worst....I am wrongly made, Thomasin," she added, with a mournful smile.
"Some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by
turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. But I
always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature--I had not the compass of
heart nor the enterprise for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as
I was when my husband's spirit flew away I have sat ever since--never
attempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a young woman
then, and I might have had another family by this time, and have been
comforted by them for the failure of this one son."

"It is more noble in you that you did not."

"The more noble, the less wise."

"Forget it, and be soothed, dear Aunt. And I shall not leave you alone