"But how do you
mean--you have killed him?"
"I mean that I have," she murmured in a reverie.
"What, bodily? Is he dead?"
"Yes. He heard me crying about you, and he bitterly taunted me; and
called you by a foul name; and then I did it. My heart could not
bear it. He had nagged me about you before. And then I dressed
myself and came away to find you."
By degrees he was inclined to believe that she had faintly attempted,
at least, what she said she had done; and his horror at her impulse
was mixed with amazement at the strength of her affection for
himself, and at the strangeness of its quality, which had apparently
extinguished her moral sense altogether. Unable to realize the
gravity of her conduct, she seemed at last content; and he looked
at her as she lay upon his shoulder, weeping with happiness, and
wondered what obscure strain in the d'Urberville blood had led to
this aberration--if it were an aberration. There momentarily flashed
through his mind that the family tradition of the coach and murder
might have arisen because the d'Urbervilles had been known to do
these things. As well as his confused and excited ideas could
reason, he supposed that in the moment of mad grief of which she
spoke, her mind had lost its balance, and plunged her into this
abyss.
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