one.

"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered. How much
easier are hasty actions than speeches that will excuse them!"

"If he were only to die--" Wildeve murmured.

"Do not think of it! I would not buy hope of immunity by so cowardly
a desire even if I hated him. Now I am going up to him again. Thomasin
bade me tell you she would be down in a few minutes. Good-bye."

She returned, and Thomasin soon appeared. When she was seated in the gig
with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, Wildeve lifted
his eyes to the bedroom windows. Looking from one of them he could
discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive away. It was Eustacia's.

2--A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding

Clym's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. His strength
returned, and a month after the visit of Thomasin he might have been
seen walking about the garden. Endurance and despair, equanimity and
gloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly
in his face. He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that
related to his mother; and though Eustacia knew that he was thinking
of it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever to
bring it up anew. When his mind had been weaker his heart had led him to
speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into
taciturnity.

One evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedly
spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner of
the house and came up to him.

"Christian, isn't it?" said Clym. "I am glad you have found me out. I
shall soon want you to go to Blooms-End and assist me in putting the
house in order. I suppose it is all locked up as I left it?"

"Yes, Mister Clym."

"Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?"

"Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was coming to tell 'ee of
something else which is quite different from what we have lately had in
the family. I am sent by the rich gentleman at the Woman, that we used
to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Wildeve is doing well of a
girl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutes
more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what have
kept 'em there since they came into their money."

"And she is getting on well, you say?"

"Yes, sir. Only Mr. Wildeve is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that's what
they say in the kitchen, but I was