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 politic 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, blackhearted man," he answered.
"And that this woman is your victim; and I not less than she."
"Ah! don't taunt me, madam. This 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
