“Eustacia! could I forget that last autumn at this same day of the month and at this same place you lighted exactly such a fire as a signal for me to come and see you?  Why should there have been a bonfire again by Captain Vye’s house if not for the same purpose?”

“Yes, yes—­I own it,” she cried under her breath, with a drowsy fervour of manner and tone which was quite peculiar to her.  “Don’t begin speaking to me as you did, Damon; you will drive me to say words I would not wish to say to you.  I had given you up, and resolved not to think of you any more; and then I heard the news, and I came out and got the fire ready because I thought that you had been faithful to me.”

“What have you heard to make you think that?” said Wildeve, astonished.

“That you did not marry her!” she murmured exultingly.  “And I knew it was because you loved me best, and couldn’t do it...  Damon, you have been cruel to me to go away, and I have said I would never forgive you.  I do not think I can forgive you entirely, even now—­it is too much for a woman of any spirit to quite overlook.”

“If I had known you wished to call me up here only to reproach me, I wouldn’t have come.”

“But I don’t mind it, and I do forgive you now that you have not married her, and have come back to me!”

“Who told you that I had not married her?”

“My grandfather.  He took a long walk today, and as he was coming home he overtook some person who told him of a broken-off wedding:  he thought it might be yours, and I knew it was.”

“Does anybody else know?”

“I suppose not.  Now Damon, do you see why I lit my signal fire?  You did not think I would have lit it if I had imagined you to have become the husband of this woman.  It is insulting my pride to suppose that.”

Wildeve was silent; it was evident that he had supposed as much.

“Did you indeed think I believed you were married?” she again demanded earnestly.  “Then you wronged me; and upon my life and heart I can hardly bear to recognize that you have such ill thoughts of me!  Damon, you are not worthy of me:  I see it, and yet I love you.  Never mind, let it go—­I must bear your mean opinion as best I may...  It is true, is it not,” she added with ill-concealed anxiety, on his making no demonstration, “that you could not bring yourself to give me up, and are still going to love me best of all?”

“Yes; or why should I have come?” he said touchily.  “Not that fidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speech about my unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if by anybody, and comes with an ill grace from you.  However, the curse of inflammability is upon me, and I must live under it, and take any snub from a woman.  It has brought me down from engineering to innkeeping:  what lower stage it has in store for me I have yet to learn.”  He continued to look upon her gloomily.

She seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that the firelight shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile, “Have you seen anything better than that in your travels?”