United States or Czechia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the immediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and Bathsheba arose with a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink of so dismal a place. "There were now other footsteps to be heard along the road. Bathsheba's nerves were still unstrung: she crouched down out of sight again, and the pedes- trian came into view.
If Satan had not tempted me with that face of yours, and those cursed coquetries, I should have He turned to Fanny then. "But never mind, darling, 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 product* of her union with Troy.
The light of Troy's lantern in the churchyard was noticed about ten o'clock by the maid-servant, who casually glanced from the window in that direction whilst taking her supper, and she called Bathsheba's attention to it. They looked curiously at the phenomenon for a time, until Liddy was sent to bed. bathsheba did not sleep very heavily that night.
Finding that her mistress was going to say no more, Liddy glided out, closed the door softly, and went to bed. Bathsheba's face, as she continued looking into the fire that evening, might have excited solicitousness on her account even among those who loved her least.
"First we'll call upon her." "But why? Come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the surrogate's." "But she must be consulted; at any rate informed." "Very well; go on." They went up the hill to Bathsheba's house. When they stood at the entrance, Troy said, "Wait here a moment." Opening the door, he glided inside, leaving the door ajar. Boldwood waited.
And to that had destiny subjoined this rencounter to-night, which had, in Bathsheba's wild imagining, turned her companion's failure to success, her humiliation to triumph, her luck- lessness to ascendency; et had thrown over herself a garish light of mockery, and set upon all things about her an ironical smile.
Everything was silent as the grave when they paused on the landing. Liddy knocked, and Bathsheba's dress was heard rustling across the room: the key turned in the lock, and she opened the door. Her looks were calm and nearly rigid, like a slightly animated bust of Melpomene. "Oh, Mr. Aldritch, you have come at last," she murmured from her lips merely, and threw back the door. "Ah, and Mr. Thirdly.
It was evident that such a nature as his had no attraction for a woman of Bathsheba's taste. But Boldwood grew hot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell." His first impulse was to go and thrust himself between them. This could be done, but only in one way by asking to see a sample of her corn.
Oak may have had the best of intentions in withholding for as many days as possible the details of what had happened to Fanny; but had he known that Bathsheba's perceptions had already been exercised in the matter, he would have done nothing to lengthen the minutes of suspense she was now undergoing, when the certainty which must terminate it would be the worst fact suspected after all.
He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough. So the chatter was all on her side. There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel's.
Word Of The Day