The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence
affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the
body: she nearly fainted. Who had done this?
There was only one person on the premises besides
herself. Eustacia involuntarily turned to the
open window which overlooked the garden as far as
the bank that bounded it. On the summit of the
latter stood Charley, sufficiently elevated by its
height to see into the room. His gaze was directed
eagerly and solicitously upon her.
She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.
“You have taken them away?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I saw you looking at them too long.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“You have been heart-broken all the morning,
as if you did not want to live.”
“Well?”
“And I could not bear to leave them in your
way. There was meaning in your look at them.”
“Where are they now?”
“Locked up.”
“Where?”
“In the stable.”
“Give them to me.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You refuse?”
“I do. I care too much for you to give
’em up.”
She turned aside, her face for the first time softening
from the stony immobility of the earlier day, and
the corners of her mouth resuming something of that
delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments
of despair. At last she confronted him again.
“Why should I not die if I wish?” she
said tremulously. “I have made a bad bargain
with life, and I am weary of it—weary.
And now you have hindered my escape. O, why did
you, Charley! What makes death painful except
the thought of others’ grief?—and
that is absent in my case, for not a sigh would follow
me!”
“Ah, it is trouble that has done this!
I wish in my very soul that he who brought it about
might die and rot, even if ’tis transportation
to say it!”
“Charley, no more of that. What do you
mean to do about this you have seen?”
“Keep it close as night, if you promise not
to think of it again.”
“You need not fear. The moment has passed.
I promise.” She then went away, entered
the house, and lay down.
Later in the afternoon her grandfather returned.
He was about to question her categorically; but on
looking at her he withheld his words.
“Yes, it is too bad to talk of,” she slowly
returned in answer to his glance. “Can
my old room be got ready for me tonight, grandfather?
I shall want to occupy it again.”
He did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left
her husband, but ordered the room to be prepared.
An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated
