An instant after, the front door opened and
closed, steps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared
at the entrance to the room, looking in upon her.
He beheld it all by degrees, stared in stupefaction at
the scene, as if he thought it an illusion raised by some
fiendish
incantation. Bathsheba, pallid as a corpse on
end, gazed back at him in the same wild way.
So little are instinctive guesses the fruit of a legitimate
induction, that at this moment, as he stood with the
door in his hand, Troy never once thought of Fanny in
connection with what he saw. His first confused idea
was that somebody in the house had died.
"Well -- what?" said Troy, blankly.
"I must go! I must go!" said Bathsheba, to herself
more than to him. She came with a dilated eye towards
the door, to push past him.
"What's the matter, in God's name? who's dead?"
said Troy.
"I cannot say; let me go out. I want air!" she
continued.
"But no; stay, I insist!" He seized her hand, and
then volition seemed to leave her, and she went off into
a state of passivity. He, still holding her, came up the
room, and thus, hand in hand, Troy and Bathsheba
approached the coffin's side.
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