 with me abroad.«
    »I have not forgotten. But why have you come so unexpectedly to repeat the
question, when you only promised to come next Saturday? I thought I was to have
plenty of time to consider.«
    »Yes, but the situation is different now.«
    »Explain to me.«
    »I don't want to explain, for I may pain you.«
    »But I must know the reason of this hurry.«
    »It is simply my ardour, dear Eustacia. Everything is smooth now.«
    »Then why are you so ruffled?«
    »I am not aware of it. All is as it should be. Mrs. Yeobright - but she is
nothing to us.«
    »Ah, I knew she had something to do with it! Come, I don't like reserve.«
    »No - she has nothing. She only says she wishes me to give up Thomasin
because another man is anxious to marry her. The woman, now she no longer needs
me, actually shows off!« Wildeve's vexation had escaped him in spite of himself.
    Eustacia was silent a long while. »You are in the awkward position of an
official who is no longer wanted,« she said in a changed tone.
    »It seems so. But I have not yet seen Thomasin.«
    »And that irritates you. Don't deny it, Damon. You are actually nettled by
this slight from an unexpected quarter.«
    »Well?«
    »And you come to get me because you cannot get her. This is certainly a new
position altogether. I am to be a stop-gap.«
    »Please remember that I proposed the same thing the other day.«
    Eustacia again remained in a sort of stupefied silence. What curious feeling
was this coming over her? Was it really possible that her interest in Wildeve
had been so entirely the result of antagonism that the glory and the dream
departed from the man with the first sound that he was no longer coveted by her
rival? She was, then, secure of him at last. Thomasin no longer required him.
What a humiliating victory! He loved her best, she thought; and yet - dared she
to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so softly? - what was the man worth
whom a woman inferior to herself did not value? The sentiment which lurks more
or less in all animate nature - that of not desiring the undesired of others -
was lively as a passion in the supersubtle, epicurean heart of Eustacia. Her
social superiority over him,
