you could not bring yourself to give me up, and are still going to love
me best of all?"

"Yes; or why should I have come?" he said touchily. "Not that
fidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speech about my
unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if by anybody, and
comes with an ill grace from you. However, the curse of inflammability
is upon me, and I must live under it, and take any snub from a woman. It
has brought me down from engineering to innkeeping--what lower stage it
has in store for me I have yet to learn." He continued to look upon her
gloomily.

She seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that the firelight
shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile, "Have you seen
anything better than that in your travels?"

Eustacia was not one to commit herself to such a position without good
ground. He said quietly, "No."

"Not even on the shoulders of Thomasin?"

"Thomasin is a pleasing and innocent woman."

"That's nothing to do with it," she cried with quick passionateness. "We
will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of." After a
long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth, "Must I go
on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and
own that no words can express how gloomy I have been because of that
dreadful belief I held till two hours ago--that you had quite deserted
me?"