up, leading the boy to understand that his departure
would be at three or four in the morning; for this, though an
exceptional hour, was less strange than midnight, the time actually
agreed on, the packet from Budmouth sailing between one and two.

At last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait. By no
effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits which he had
experienced ever since his last meeting with Eustacia, but he hoped
there was that in his situation which money could cure. He had persuaded
himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle wife by settling
on her the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion towards
another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was possible. And though
he meant to adhere to Eustacia's instructions to the letter, to deposit
her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the
spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating
fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a
mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together.

He would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures, maxims,
and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he again went softly to the
stable, harnessed the horse, and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse
by the head, he led him with the covered car out of the yard to a spot
by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn.

Here Wildeve waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high
bank that had been cast up at this place. Along the surface of the road
where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and
clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps, plunged
into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness. Only one
sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a
ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed
the boundary of the heath in this direction.

He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the
midnight hour must have struck. A very strong doubt had arisen in
his mind if Eustacia would venture down the hill in such weather; yet
knowing her nature he felt that she might. "Poor thing! 'tis like her
ill-luck," he murmured.

At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. To his surprise
it was nearly a quarter past midnight. He now wished that he had driven
up the circuitous road to Mistover, a plan not adopted