Thomas Hardy

“ Am I the cause of your sin?" (Eustacia made a trembling motion towards him.) "What, you can begin to shed tears and offer me your hand? Good God! can you? No, not I. I'll not commit the fault of taking that." (The hand she had offered dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) "Well, yes, I'll take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were wasted there before I knew what I cherished. How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?" ”

“ God have mercy upon a miserable woman!...You have beaten me in this game--I beg you to stay your hand in pity!...I confess that I--wilfully did not undo the door the first time she knocked--but--I should have unfastened it the second-- if I had not thought you had gone to do it yourself. When I found you had not I opened it, but she was gone. That's the extent of my crime--towards HER. Best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--I think they do. Now I will leave you--for ever and ever!"
"Tell all, and I WILL pity you. Was the man in the house with you Wildeve?" ”

“ By no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless construction be placed upon a single one of the letters themselves. The solitary exception was an empty envelope directed to her, and the handwriting was Wildeve's. Yeobright held it up. Eustacia was doggedly silent.
"Can you read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubtless we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. I shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my lady is." ”

“ O, you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! I have held out long--but you crush me down. I beg for mercy--I cannot bear this any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! ”

“ Most women, even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of evil in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek; but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there anything malicious in her look. ”