elope directed to her, and the handwriting
was Wildeve's. Yeobright held it up. Eustacia was doggedly silent.

"Can you read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubtless we shall find
more soon, and what was inside them. I shall no doubt be gratified by
learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a
certain trade my lady is."

"Do you say it to me--do you?" she gasped.

He searched further, but found nothing more. "What was in this
letter?" he said.

"Ask the writer. Am I your hound that you should talk to me in this
way?"

"Do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? Answer. Don't look
at me with those eyes as if you would bewitch me again! Sooner than
that I die. You refuse to answer?"

"I wouldn't tell you after this, if I were as innocent as the sweetest
babe in heaven!"

"Which you are not."

"Certainly I am not absolutely," she replied. "I have not done what
you suppose; but if to have done no harm at all is the only innocence
recognized, I am beyond forgiveness. But I require no help from your
conscience."

"You can resist, and resist again! Instead of hating you I could, I
think, mourn for and pity you, if you were contrite, and would confess
all. Forgive you I never can. I don't speak of your lover--I will
give you the benefit of the doubt in that matter, for it only affects
me personally. But the other: had you half-killed ME, had it been
that you wilfully took the sight away from these feeble eyes of mine,
I could have forgiven you. But THAT'S too much for nature!"

"Say no more. I will do without your pity. But I would have saved
you from uttering what you will regret."

"I am going away now. I shall leave you."

"You need not go, as I am going myself. You will keep just as far
away from me by staying here."

"Call her to mind--think of her--what goodness there was in her: it
showed in every line of her face! Most women, even when but slightly
annoyed, show a flicker of evil in some curl of the mouth or some
corner of the cheek; but as for her, never in her angriest moments was
there anything malicious in her look. She was angered quickly, but
she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there was the
meekness of a child. What came of it?--what cared you? You hated her
just as she was learning to love you. O! couldn't you see what was
best for you, but must bring a curse upon me, and agony and death
upon her, by doing that cruel deed! What was the fellow's nam