"How you keep a-mumbling!" said Arabella. "I should have thought you'd have got over all that craze about books by this time. And so you would, if you'd had any sense to begin with. You are as bad now as when we were first married."
On one occasion while soliloquizing thus he called her "Sue" unconsciously.
"I wish you'd mind who you are talking to!" said Arabella indignantly. "Calling a respectable married woman by the name of that—" She remembered herself and he did not catch the word.
But in the course of time, when she saw how things were going, and how very little she had to fear from Sue's rivalry, she had a fit of generosity. "I suppose you want to see your—Sue?" she said. "Well, I don't mind her coming. You can have her here if you like."
"I don't wish to see her again."
"Oh—that's a change!"
"And don't tell her anything about me—that I'm ill, or anything. She has chosen her course. Let her go!"
One day he received a surprise. Mrs. Edlin came to see him, quite on her own account. Jude's wife, whose feelings as to where his affections were centred had reached absolute indifference by this time, went out, leaving the old woman alone with Jude. He impulsively asked how Sue was, and then said bluntly, remembering what Sue had told him: "I suppose they are still only husband and wife in name?"
Mrs. Edlin hesitated. "Well, no—it's different now. She's begun it quite lately—all of her own free will."
"When did she begin?" he asked quickly.