s, was
glad to see Clym, and took him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully
screening the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand.

"Tamsin, have you heard that Eustacia is not with me now?" he said when
they had sat down again.

"No," said Thomasin, alarmed.

"And not that I have left Alderworth?"

"No. I never hear tidings from Alderworth unless you bring them. What is
the matter?"

Clym in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to Susan Nunsuch's
boy, the revelation he had made, and what had resulted from his
charging Eustacia with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed. He
suppressed all mention of Wildeve's presence with her.

"All this, and I not knowing it!" murmured Thomasin in an awestruck
tone, "Terrible! What could have made her--O, Eustacia! And when you
found it out you went in hot haste to her? Were you too cruel?--or is
she really so wicked as she seems?"

"Can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?"

"I can fancy so."

"Very well, then--I'll admit that he can. But now what is to be done?"

"Make it up again--if a quarrel so deadly can ever be made up. I almost
wish you had not told me. But do try to be reconciled. There are ways,
after all, if you both wish to."

"I don't know that we do both wish to make it up," said Clym. "If she
had wished it, would she not have sent to me by this time?"

"You seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her."

"True; but I have been tossed to and fro in doubt if I ought, after such
strong provocation. To see me now, Thomasin, gives you no idea of what I
have been; of what depths I have descended to in these few last days. O,
it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that! Can I ever forget
it, or even agree to see her again?"

"She might not have known that anything serious would come of it, and
perhaps she did not mean to keep Aunt out altogether."

"She says herself that she did not. But the fact remains that keep her
out she did."

"Believe her sorry, and send for her."

"How if she will not come?"

"It will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit to nourish
enmity. But I do not think that for a moment."

"I will do this. I will wait for a day or two longer--not longer than
two days certainly; and if she does not send to me in that time I will
indeed send to her. I thought to have seen Wildeve here tonight. Is he
from home?"

Thomasin blushed a little. "No," she said. "He is merely gone out for a