—you chose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as if I had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!"

"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 [bad word] 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 [bad word] 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 [bad word] "

"But I don't mind it, and I do forgive you now that you have not married her, and [bad word] back to me!"

"Who told you that I had not married her?"

"My grandfather. He took a long walk today, and as he [bad word] 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 [bad word] 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 [bad word]  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 [bad word] " 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, [bad word] 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."