“Hush, hush!  O, pray, Clym, don’t, don’t say it!” implored Thomasin, affrighted into sobs and tears; while Eustacia, at the other side of the room, though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair.  Clym went on without heeding his cousin.

“But I am not worth receiving further proof even of Heaven’s reprobation.  Do you think, Thomasin, that she knew me—­that she did not die in that horrid mistaken notion about my not forgiving her, which I can’t tell you how she acquired?  If you could only assure me of that!  Do you think so, Eustacia?  Do speak to me.”

“I think I can assure you that she knew better at last,” said Thomasin.  The pallid Eustacia said nothing.

“Why didn’t she come to my house?  I would have taken her in and showed her how I loved her in spite of all.  But she never came; and I didn’t go to her, and she died on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help her till it was too late.  If you could have seen her, Thomasin, as I saw her—­a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the bare ground, moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly deserted by all the world, it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved a brute.  And this poor woman my mother!  No wonder she said to the child, ‘You have seen a broken-hearted woman.’  What a state she must have been brought to, to say that! and who can have done it but I?  It is too dreadful to think of, and I wish I could be punished more heavily than I am.  How long was I what they called out of my senses?”

“A week, I think.”

“And then I became calm.”

“Yes, for four days.”

“And now I have left off being calm.”

“But try to be quiet:  please do, and you will soon be strong.  If you could remove that impression from your mind—­”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.  “But I don’t want to get strong.  What’s the use of my getting well?  It would be better for me if I die, and it would certainly be better for Eustacia.  Is Eustacia there?”

“Yes.”

“It would be better for you, Eustacia, if I were to die?”

“Don’t press such a question, dear Clym.”

“Well, it really is but a shadowy supposition; for unfortunately I am going to live.  I feel myself getting better.  Thomasin, how long are you going to stay at the inn, now that all this money has come to your husband?”

“Another month or two, probably; until my illness is over.  We cannot get off till then.  I think it will be a month or more.”

“Yes, yes.  Of course.  Ah, Cousin Tamsie, you will get over your trouble—­one little month will take you through it, and bring something to console you; but I shall never get over mine, and no consolation will come!”

“Clym, you are unjust to yourself.  Depend upon it, aunt thought kindly of you.  I know that, if she had lived, you would have been reconciled with her.”

“But she didn’t come to see me, though I asked her, before I married, if she would come.  Had she come, or had I gone there, she would never have died saying, ‘I am a broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.’  My door has always been open to her—­a welcome here has always awaited her.  But that she never came to see.”