mobility of his frame could be discerned an incipient movement, as in the darkest night may be discerned light after a while. He was gradually sinking forwards. The lines of his features softened, and dismay modulated to illimitable sadness. Bathsheba was regarding him from the other side, still with parted lips and distracted eyes. Capacity for intense feeling is proportionate to the general intensity of the nature, and perhaps in all Fanny's sufferings, much greater, relatively to her strength, there never was a time when she suffered in an absolute sense what Bathsheba suffered now. This is what Troy did. He sank upon his knees with an indefinable union of remorse and reverence upon his face, and bending over Fanny Robin, gently kissed her, as one would kiss an infant asleep to avoid awakening it.

At the sight and sound of that, to her, unendurable act, Bathsheba sprang towards him. All the strong feelings which had been scattered over her existence since she knew what feeling was, seemed gathered together into one pulsation now. The revulsion from her indignant mood a little earlier, when she had meditated upon compromised honour, forestalment, eclipse by another, was violent and entire. All that was forgotten in the simple and still strong attachment of wife to husband. She had sighed for her self-completeness then, and now she cried aloud against the severance of the union she had deplored. She flung her arms round Troy's neck, exclaiming wildly from the deepest deep of her heart:

"I will not kiss you," he said, pushing her away.

Had the wife now but gone no further. Yet, perhaps, under the harrowing circumstances, to speak out was the one wrong act which can be better understood, if not forgiven in her, than the right and polite one. All the feeling she had been betrayed into showing she drew back to herself again by a strenuous effort of self-command.

"What have you to say as your reason?" she asked, her bitter voice being strangely low quite that of another

woman now.

"I have to say that I have been a bad, black-hearted man," he answered. "And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she."

This.

"Ah! don't taunt me, madam. woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be. If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have married her. I never had another thought till you came in my way. Would to God that I had; but it is all too late! I deserve to live in torment for this!" He turned to Fanny then. "But never mind, darling," he said; “in the sight of Heaven you are my very, very wife."

At these words there arose from Bathsheba's lips a long low cry of measureless despair and indignation, such a wail of anguish as had never before been heard within those old-inhabited walls. It was the Terέhora of her union with Troy.

"If she's that, — what am I?" she added, as a continuation of the same cry, and sobbing fearfully; and the rarity with her of such abandonment only made the condition more terrible.

"You are nothing to me nothing," said Troy, heartlessly. "A ceremony before a priest doesn't make a marriage. I am not morally yours."

"Don't don't kiss them! Oh, Frank, I can't bear it I can't! I love you better than she did: kiss me too, Frank kiss me! You will, Frank, kiss me too!" There was something so abnormal and startling in the childlike pain and simplicity of this appeal from a woman of Bathsheba's calibre and independence that Troy, loosening her tightly clasped A vehement impulse to flee from him, arms from his neck, looked at her in be- to run from this place, hide, and escape wilderment. It was such an unexpected humiliation at any price, not stopping revelation of all women being alike at short of death itself, mastered Bathsheba heart, even those so different in their ac-now. She waited not an instant, but cessories as Fanny and this one beside turned to the door and ran out.

him, that Troy could hardly seem to believe her to be his proud wife Bathsheba. Fanny's own spirit seemed to be animating her frame. But this was the mood of a few instants only. When the momentary surprise had passed, his expression changed to a silencing imperious gaze.

CHAPTER XLIV.

UNDER A TREE: REACTION.

BATHSHEBA went along the dark road, neither knowing nor caring about the direction or issue of her flight. The first time that she definitely noticed her posi

tion was when she reached a gate leading into a thicket overhung by some large oak and beech-trees. On looking into the place it occurred to her that she had seen it by daylight on some previous occasion, and that what appeared like an impassable thicket was in reality a brake of fern, now withering fast. She could think of nothing better to do with her palpitating self than to go in here and hide; and entering, she lighted on a spot sheltered from the damp fog by a reclining trunk, where she sank down upon a tangled couch of fronds and stems. She mechanically pulled some armfuls round her to keep off the breezes, and closed her eyes.

Whether she slept or not that night Bathsheba was not clearly aware. But it was with a freshened existence and a cooler brain that, a long time afterwards, she became conscious of some interesting proceedings which were going on in the trees above her head and around.

A coarse-throated chatter was the first sound.

It was a sparrow just waking. Next: "Chee-weeze - weeze-weeze!" from another retreat.

It was a finch.

get rid of them, when multitudes of the same family lying round about her rose and flattered away in the breeze thus created, "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

There was an opening towards the east, and the glow from the as yet unrisen sun attracted her eyes thither. From her feet, and between the beautiful yellowing ferns with their feathery arms, the ground sloped downwards to a hollow, in which was a species of swamp, dotted with fungi. A morning mist hung over it now -a fulsome yet magnificent silvery veil, full of light from the sun, yet semi-opaque

the bedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its hazy luminousness. Up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of the common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the blades of which glistened in the emerging sun like scythes. But the general aspect of the swamp was malignant. From its moist and poisonous coat seemed to be exhaled the essences of evil things in the earth, and in the waters under the earth. The fungi grew in all manner of positions from rotting leaves and tree-stumps, some exhibiting to her listless gaze their clammy tops, others their oozing gills. Some

Third: "Tink-tink-tink-tink-a-chink!" were marked with great splotches, red as

from the hedge.

It was a robin.

"Chuck-chuck-chuck!" overhead.

A squirrel.

Then, from the road, "With my ra-tata, and my rum-tum-tum!"

arterial blood-others were saffron yellow, and others tall and attenuated with stems like macaroni. Some were leathery and of richest browns. The hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the immediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and Bathsheba arose with a tremour at the thought of having passed the night on the brink of so dismal a place.

It was a ploughboy. Presently he came opposite, and she believed from his voice that he was one of the boys on her own farm. He was followed by a shambling tramp of heavy feet, and looking through There were now other footsteps to be the ferns Bathsheba could just discern heard along the road. Bathsheba's in the wan light of daylight a team of her nerves were still unstrung: she crouched own horses. They stopped to drink at a down out of sight again, and the pedespond on the other side of the way. She trian came into view. He was a schoolwatched them flouncing into the pool, boy, with a bag slung over his shoulder drinking, tossing up their heads, drink- containing his dinner, and a book in his ing again, the water dribbling from their hand. He paused by the gate, and, withlips in silver threads. There was an-out looking up, continued murmuring other flounce, and they came out of the words in tones quite loud enough to reach pond, and turned back again towards the her ears. farm.

She looked further around. Day was just dawning, and beside its cool air and colours her heated actions and resolves of the night stood out in lurid contrast. She perceived that in her lap, and clinging to her hair, were red and yellow leaves which had come down from the tree and settled silently upon her during her partial sleep. Bathsheba shook her dress to

"O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord, O Lord: '-that I know out o' book. 'Give us, give us, give us, give us, give us :'-that I know. Grace that, grace that, grace that, grace that:'-that I know." Other words followed to the same effect. The boy was of the dunce class apparently; the book was a psalter, and this was his way of learning the collect. In the worst attacks of trouble

dead in your husband's house from his ill usage, and that is to be found alive through having gone away to the house of somebody else. I've thought of it all this morning, and I've chosen my course. A runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody, a burden to herself and a byword - all of which make up a heap of misery greater than any that comes by staying at home-though this may include the trifling items of insult, beating, and starvation. Liddy, if ever you marry God forbid that you ever should! -you'll find yourself in a fearful situation; but mind this, don't you flinch. Stand your ground, and be cut to pieces. That's what I'm going to do."

"Oh, mistress, don't talk so!" said Liddy, taking her hand; "but I knew you had too much sense to bide away. May I ask what dreadful thing it is that has happened between you and him?"

“You may ask; but I may not tell." In about ten minutes they returned to the house by a circuitous route, entering at the rear. Bathsheba glided up the back stairs to a disused attic, and her companion followed.

66

Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid's Trage-
dy;' and the Mourning Bride;' and
let me see-Night Thoughts,' and the
Vanity of Human Wishes.""

"And that story of the black man who murdered his wife Desdemona? It is a nice dismal one that would suit you excellent just now."

"Now, Lidd, you've been looking into my books without telling me; and I said you were not to! How do you know it would suit me? It wouldn't suit me at all."

"But if the others do

"No, they don't; and I won't read dismal books. Why should I read dismal books, indeed? Bring me 'Love in a Village,' and the Maid of the Mill,' and Doctor Syntax,' and some volumes of the Spectator.'

All that day Bathsheba and Liddy lived in the attic in a state of barricade; a precaution which proved to be needless as against Troy, for he did not appear in the neighbourhood or trouble them at all. Bathsheba sat at the window till sunset, sometimes attempting to read, at other times watching every movement outside Liddy," she said, with a lighter heart, without much purpose, and listening withfor youth and hope had begun to re-as-out much interest to every sound. sert themselves; you are to be my con- The sun went down almost blood-red fidante for the present somebody must that night, and a livid cloud received its be- and I choose you. Well, I shall take rays in the east. Up against this dark up my abode here for a while. Will you background the west front of the church get a fire lighted, put down a piece of car-tower- the only part of the edifice vispet, and help me to make the place comfort-ible from the farm-house windows-rose able? Afterwards I want you and Mary-distinct and lustrous, the vane upon the ann to bring up that little iron bedstead pinnacle bristling with rays. Here, about in the small room, and the bed belong-six o'clock, the young men of the village ing to it, and the table, and some other gathered, as was their custom, for a game things. . . . What shall I do to pass the of fives. The tower had been conseheavy time away!" crated to this ancient diversion from time "Hemming handkerchiefs is a very immemorial, the western façade convengood thing," said Liddy.

"Oh, no, no! I hate needle-workalways did." "Knitting?"

"And that, too."

"You might finish your sampler. Only the carnations and peacocks want filling in; and then it could be framed and glazed, and hung beside your aunt's,

ma'am."

iently forming the boundary of the Ichurch-yard at that end, where the ground was trodden hard and bare as a pavement by the players. She could see the balls flying upwards, almost to the belfry window, and the brown and black heads of the young lads darting about right and left, their white shirt-sleeves gleaming in the sun; whilst occasionally a shout and a peal of hearty laughter varied the stillness of the evening air. They continued playing for a quarter of an hour or so, when the game concluded abruptly, and the players leapt over the wall and vanished round to the north side behind a yew-tree, which was also Yes. Some of those we stowed away half behind a beech, now spreading in in boxes." A faint gleam of humour one mass of golden foliage, on which the passed over her face as she said: "Bring | branches traced black lines.

"Samplers are out of date- horribly countrified. No, Liddy, I'll read. Bring up some books -not new ones. I haven't heart to read anything new." "Some of your uncle's old ones, ma'am?"

་་