“Ah! what man?”

He jerked his elbow to the south-east—­the direction of the Quiet Woman.

Eustacia turned quickly to him.  “Do you mean Mr. Wildeve?”

“Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and I have come to let you know of it, because I believe you might have power to drive it away.”

“I?  What is the trouble?”

“It is quite a secret.  It is that he may refuse to marry Thomasin Yeobright after all.”

Eustacia, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her part in such a drama as this.  She replied coldly, “I do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere.”

“But, miss, you will hear one word?”

“I cannot.  I am not interested in the marriage, and even if I were I could not compel Mr. Wildeve to do my bidding.”

“As the only lady on the heath I think you might,” said Venn with subtle indirectness.  “This is how the case stands.  Mr. Wildeve would marry Thomasin at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in the case.  This other woman is some person he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, I believe.  He will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the woman who loves him dearly.  Now, if you, miss, who have so much sway over us men-folk, were to insist that he should treat your young neighbour Tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery.”

“Ah, my life!” said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire.  “You think too much of my influence over men-folk indeed, reddleman.  If I had such a power as you imagine I would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been kind to me—­which Thomasin Yeobright has not particularly, to my knowledge.”

“Can it be that you really don’t know of it—­how much she had always thought of you?”

“I have never heard a word of it.  Although we live only two miles apart I have never been inside her aunt’s house in my life.”

The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Venn that thus far he had utterly failed.  He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to unmask his second argument.

“Well, leaving that out of the question, ’tis in your power, I assure you, Miss Vye, to do a great deal of good to another woman.”

She shook her head.

“Your comeliness is law with Mr. Wildeve.  It is law with all men who see ’ee.  They say, ’This well-favoured lady coming—­what’s her name?  How handsome!’ Handsomer than Thomasin Yeobright,” the reddleman persisted, saying to himself, “God forgive a rascal for lying!” And she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so.  There was a certain obscurity in Eustacia’s beauty, and Venn’s eye was not trained.  In her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour.