ooking like Lazarus coming from the tomb.
It was Yeobright. Neither Venn nor Charley spoke, and Clym continued,
"You shall see her. There will be time enough to tell the captain when
it gets daylight. You would like to see her too--would you not, Diggory?
She looks very beautiful now."
Venn assented by rising to his feet, and with Charley he followed Clym
to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; Charley did
the same. They followed Yeobright upstairs to the landing, where there
was a candle burning, which Yeobright took in his hand, and with it led
the way into an adjoining room. Here he went to the bedside and folded
back the sheet.
They stood silently looking upon Eustacia, who, as she lay there still
in death, eclipsed all her living phases. Pallor did not include all
the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was
almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant,
as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking.
Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between
fervour and resignation. Her black hair was looser now than either of
them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. The
stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller in a
country domicile had at last found an artistically happy background.
Nobody spoke, till at length Clym covered her and turned aside. "Now
come here," he said.
They went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed,
lay another figure--Wildeve. Less repose was visible in his face than
in Eustacia's, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the
least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he
was born for a higher destiny than this. The only sign upon him of his
recent struggle for life was in his fingertips, which were worn and
sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the
weir-wall.
Yeobright's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables
since his reappearance, that Venn imagined him resigned. It was only
when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true
state of his mind was apparent. Here he said, with a wild smile,
inclining his head towards the chamber in which Eustacia lay, "She is
the second woman I have killed this year. I was a great cause of my
mother's death, and I am the chief cause of hers."
"How?" said Venn.
"I sp
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