She started at two o'clock, and her meeting with Eustacia was hastened by the appearance of the young lady beside the pool and bank which bordered her grandfather's premises, where she stood surveying the scene, and perhaps thinking of the romantic enactments it had witnessed in past days. When Mrs. Yeobright approached, Eustacia surveyed her with the calm stare of a stranger.
The mother-in-law was the first to speak. "I was coming to see you," she said.
"Indeed!" said Eustacia with surprise, for Mrs. Yeobright, much to the girl's mortification, had refused to be present at the wedding. "I did not at all expect you."
"I was coming on business only," said the visitor, more coldly than at first. "Will you excuse my asking this—Have you received a gift from Thomasin's husband?"
"A gift?"
"I mean money!"
"What—I myself?"
"Well, I meant yourself, privately—though I was not going to put it in that way."
"Money from Mr. Wildeve? No—never! Madam, what do you mean by that?" Eustacia fired up all too quickly, for her own consciousness of the old attachment between herself and Wildeve led her to jump to the conclusion that Mrs. Yeobright also knew of it, and might have come to accuse her of receiving dishonourable presents from him now.
"I simply ask the question," said Mrs. Yeobright. "I have been—"