"Only in name apparently," said Clym with rising excitement. "I believe she means to elope tonight with Wildeve. I am just going to look to it."
"Well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago. Who's sitting there?"
"My cousin Thomasin."
The captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. "I only hope it is no worse than an elopement," he said.
"Worse? What's worse than the worst a wife can do?"
"Well, I have been told a strange tale. Before starting in search of her I called up Charley, my stable lad. I missed my pistols the other day."
"Pistols?"
"He said at the time that he took them down to clean. He has now owned that he took them because he saw Eustacia looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of taking her life, but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing again. I hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of it again."
"Where are the pistols?"
"Safely locked up. O no, she won't touch them again. But there are more ways of letting out life than through a bullet-hole. What did you quarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? You must have treated her badly indeed. Well, I was always against the marriage, and I was right."