"Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without torture."
"Ah, sergeant, it won't do — you are pretending!" she said, shaking her head."
Your words are too dashing to be true."
"I am not, upon the honour of a soldier"
"But why is it so? — Of course I ask for mere pastime."
Because you are so distracting — and I am so distracted. "
"You look like it."
"I am indeed."
"Why, you only saw me the other night!"
"That makes no difference.
The lightning works instantaneously.
I loved you then, at once — as I do now."
Bathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as she liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his eyes.
"You cannot and you don"t." she said demurely.
"There is no such sudden feeling in people.
I won't listen to you any longer.
Hear me, I wish I knew what o'clock it is — I am going — I have wasted too much time here already!"
The sergeant looked at his watch and told her.
"What, haven't you a watch, miss?" he inquired.
"I have not just at present — I am about to get a new one."
"No.
You shall be given one.
Yes — you shall. A gift, Miss Everdene — a gift."
And before she knew what the young — man was intending, a heavy gold watch was in her hand.
"It is an unusually good one for a man like me to possess." he quietly said.
"That watch has a history.
Press the spring and open the back."
She did so.
"What do you see?"
"A crest and a motto."
"A coronet with five points, and beneath, Cedit amor rebus —
"Love yields to circumstance."
It's the motto of the Earls of Severn.
That watch belonged to the last lord, and was given to my mother's husband, a medical man, for his use till I came of age, when it was to be given to me.
It was all the fortune that ever I inherited.
That watch has regulated imperial interests in its time — the stately ceremonial, the courtly assignation, pompous travels, and lordly sleeps.
Now it is yours.
"But, Sergeant Troy, I cannot take this — I cannot!" she exclaimed, with round-eyed wonder.
"A gold watch!
What are you doing?
Don't be such a dissembler!" The sergeant retreated to avoid receiving back his gift, which she held out persistently towards him. Bathsheba followed as he retired.
"Keep it — do, Miss Everdene — keep it!" said the erratic child of impulse.
"The fact of your possessing it makes it worth ten times as much to me.
A more plebeian one will answer my purpose just as well, and the pleasure of knowing whose heart my old one beats against — well, I won't speak of that.
It is in far worthier hands than ever it has been in before."
"But indeed I can't have it!" she said, in a perfect simmer of distress.
"O, how can you do such a thing; that is if you really mean it!
Give me your dead father's watch, and such a valuable one!
You should not be so reckless, indeed, Sergeant Troy!"
"I loved my father: good; but better, I love you more. That's how I can do it." said the sergeant, with an intonation of such exquisite fidelity to nature that it was evidently not all acted now.