bewailed his tardy journey to his mother's house, because it was an
error which could never be rectified, and insisted that he must have
been horribly perverted by some fiend not to have thought before that
it was his duty to go to her, since she did not come to him. He would
ask Eustacia to agree with him in his self-condemnation; and when she,
seared inwardly by a secret she dared not tell, declared that she
could not give an opinion, he would say, "That's because you didn't
know my mother's nature. She was always ready to forgive if asked to
do so; but I seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that made
her unyielding. Yet not unyielding: she was proud and reserved, no
more... Yes, I can understand why she held out against me so long.
She was waiting for me. I dare say she said a hundred times in her
sorrow, 'What a return he makes for all the sacrifices I have made
for him!' I never went to her! When I set out to visit her it was too
late. To think of that is nearly intolerable!"

Sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse, unsoftened by
a single tear of pure sorrow: and then he writhed as he lay, fevered
far more by thought than by physical ills. "If I could only get one
assurance that she did not die in a belief that I was resentful," he
said one day when in this mood, "it would be better to think of than
a hope of heaven. But that I cannot do."

"You give yourself up too much to this wearying despair," said
Eustacia. "Other men's mothers have died."

"That doesn't make the loss of mine less. Yet it is less the loss
than the circumstances of the loss. I sinned against her, and on that
account there is no light for me."

"She sinned against you, I think."

"No, she did not. I committed the guilt; and may the whole burden be
upon my head!"

"I think you might consider twice before you say that," Eustacia
replied. "Single men have, no doubt, a right to curse themselves as
much as they please; but men with wives involve two in the doom they
pray down."

"I am in too sorry a state to understand what you are refining on,"
said the wretched man. "Day and night shout at me, 'You have helped
to kill her.' But in loathing myself I may, I own, be unjust to you,
my poor wife. Forgive me for it, Eustacia, for I scarcely know what
I do."

Eustacia was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such
a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial
scene was to Judas Iscari