“Oh, ’tis not much.  I have changed my things.  This is only a little dampness I’ve got coming through the rain again.”

“Stand by the fire.  Mis’ess says you be to have whatever you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you’d gone away.”

Venn drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent mood.  The steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs.  Two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow.  The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when Wildeve was alive and well; Thomasin active and smiling in the next room; Yeobright and Eustacia just made husband and wife, and Mrs. Yeobright living at Blooms-End.  It had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come.  Yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not materially changed.

While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs.  It was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper.  The woman was so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Venn.  She took from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line.

“What be they?” said Venn.

“Poor master’s bank-notes,” she answered.  “They were found in his pocket when they undressed him.”

“Then he was not coming back again for some time?” said Venn.

“That we shall never know,” said she.

Venn was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under this roof.  As nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not remain.  So he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row of bank-notes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout.  Then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together, carried the handful upstairs.  Presently the doctor appeared from above with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road.

At four o’clock there was a gentle knock at the door.  It was from Charley, who had been sent by Captain Vye to inquire if anything had been heard of Eustacia.  The girl who admitted him looked in his face as if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where Venn was seated, saying to the reddleman, “Will you tell him, please?”

Venn told.  Charley’s only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound.  He stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, “I shall see her once more?”