e who
was keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty to her to your
wrong to me? Was it Wildeve? Was it poor Thomasin's husband? Heaven,
what wickedness! Lost your voice, have you? It is natural after
detection of that most noble trick... Eustacia, didn't any tender
thought of your own mother lead you to think of being gentle to mine
at such a time of weariness? Did not one grain of pity enter your
heart as she turned away? Think what a vast opportunity was then lost
of beginning a forgiving and honest course. Why did not you kick him
out, and let her in, and say I'll be an honest wife and a noble woman
from this hour? Had I told you to go and quench eternally our last
flickering chance of happiness here you could have done no worse.
Well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred gallants, neither they
nor you can insult her any more."

"You exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint, weary voice; "but I
cannot enter into my defence--it is not worth doing. You are nothing
to me in future, and the past side of the story may as well remain
untold. I have lost all through you, but I have not complained. Your
blunders and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they
have been a wrong to me. All persons of refinement have been scared
away from me since I sank into the mire of marriage. Is this your
cherishing--to put me into a hut like this, and keep me like the wife
of a hind? You deceived me--not by words, but by appearances, which
are less seen through than words. But the place will serve as well as
any other--as somewhere to pass from--into my grave." Her words were
smothered in her throat, and her head drooped down.

"I don't know what you mean by that. Am I the cause of your sin?"
(Eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.) "What, you can begin
to shed tears and offer me your hand? Good God! can you? No, not I.
I'll not commit the fault of taking that." (The hand she had offered
dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) "Well, yes,
I'll take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were
wasted there before I knew what I cherished. How bewitched I was! How
could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?"

"O, O, O!" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs
which choked her, she sank upon her knees. "O, will you have done! O,
you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! I
have held out long--but you crush me down. I beg