Near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by Timothy Fairway, previous to the winter weather.  He took two of these as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the other his back and legs.  The reddleman would now have been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing.  He crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him.  Had he approached without any covering the chances are that he would not have been perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he burrowed underground.  In this manner he came quite close to where the two were standing.

“Wish to consult me on the matter?” reached his ears in the rich, impetuous accents of Eustacia Vye.  “Consult me?  It is an indignity to me to talk so:  I won’t bear it any longer!” She began weeping.  “I have loved you, and have shown you that I loved you, much to my regret; and yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult with me whether it would not be better to marry Thomasin.  Better—­of course it would be.  Marry her:  she is nearer to your own position in life than I am!”

“Yes, yes; that’s very well,” said Wildeve peremptorily.  “But we must look at things as they are.  Whatever blame may attach to me for having brought it about, Thomasin’s position is at present much worse than yours.  I simply tell you that I am in a strait.”

“But you shall not tell me!  You must see that it is only harassing me.  Damon, you have not acted well; you have sunk in my opinion.  You have not valued my courtesy—­the courtesy of a lady in loving you—­who used to think of far more ambitious things.  But it was Thomasin’s fault.  She won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it.  Where is she staying now?  Not that I care, nor where I am myself.  Ah, if I were dead and gone how glad she would be!  Where is she, I ask?”

“Thomasin is now staying at her aunt’s shut up in a bedroom, and keeping out of everybody’s sight,” he said indifferently.

“I don’t think you care much about her even now,” said Eustacia with sudden joyousness:  “for if you did you wouldn’t talk so coolly about her.  Do you talk so coolly to her about me?  Ah, I expect you do!  Why did you originally go away from me?  I don’t think I can ever forgive you, except on one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back again, sorry that you served me so.”

“I never wish to desert you.”

“I do not thank you for that.  I should hate it to be all smooth.  Indeed, I think I like you to desert me a little once now and then.  Love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest.  O, it is a shame to say so; but it is true!” She indulged in a little laugh.  “My low spirits begin at the very idea.  Don’t you offer me tame love, or away you go!”