She went down. Wildeve had alighted, and was standing before the horse's head when Eustacia opened the door. He did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer Thomasin. Then he looked, startled ever so little, and said one word: "Well?"
"I have not yet told him," she replied in a whisper.
"Then don't do so till he is well--it will be fatal. You are ill yourself."
"I am wretched....O Damon," she said, bursting into tears, "I--I can't tell you how unhappy I am! I can hardly bear this. I can tell nobody of my trouble--nobody knows of it but you."
"Poor girl!" said Wildeve, visibly affected at her distress, and at last led on so far as to take her hand. "It is hard, when you have done nothing to deserve it, that you should have got involved in such a web as this. You were not made for these sad scenes. I am to blame most. If I could only have saved you from it all!"
"But, Damon, please pray tell me what I must do? To sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself as being the cause of her death, and to know that I am the sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold despair. I don't know what to do. Should I tell him or should I not tell him? I always am asking myself that. O, I want to tell him; and yet I am afraid. If he find it out he must surely kill me, for nothing else will be in proportion to his feelings now. 'Beware the fury of a patient man' sounds day by day in my ears as I watch him."
"Well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance. And when you tell, you must only tell part--for his own sake."
"Which part should I keep back?"
Wildeve paused. "That I was in the house at the time," he said in a low tone.
"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered. How much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will excuse them!"
"If he were only to die--" Wildeve murmured.
"Do not think of it! I would not buy hope of immunity by so cowardly a desire even if I hated him. Now I am going up to him again. Thomasin bade me tell you she would be down in a few minutes. Good-bye."
She returned, and Thomasin soon appeared. When she was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, Wildeve lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows. Looking from one of them he could discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive away. It was Eustacia's.