r grandfather's room,
through which the fresh autumn air was blowing from the open window. Her
eye was arrested by what was a familiar sight enough, though it broke
upon her now with a new significance.

It was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's
bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against possible
burglars, the house being very lonely. Eustacia regarded them long, as
if they were the page of a book in which she read a new and a strange
matter. Quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned downstairs and
stood in deep thought.

"If I could only do it!" she said. "It would be doing much good to
myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one."

The idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in a fixed
attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was expressed in
her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision.

She turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and
entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of the
bed. The pistols were gone.

The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her brain
as a sudden vacuum affects the body--she nearly fainted. Who had
done this? There was only one person on the premises besides herself.
Eustacia involuntarily turned to the open window which overlooked the
garden as far as the bank that bounded it. On the summit of the latter
stood Charley, sufficiently elevated by its height to see into the room.
His gaze was directed eagerly and solicitously upon her.

She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.

"You have taken them away?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why did you do it?"

"I saw you looking at them too long."

"What has that to do with it?"

"You have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want to
live."

"Well?"

"And I could not bear to leave them in your way. There was meaning in
your look at them."

"Where are they now?"

"Locked up."

"Where?"

"In the stable."

"Give them to me."

"No, ma'am."

"You refuse?"

"I do. I care too much for you to give 'em up."

She turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony
immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming
something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments
of despair. At last she confronted him again.

"Why should I not die if I wish?" she said tremulously. "I have made
a