he whole blank afternoon. Such sudden alternations
from mental vacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. She could never
have believed in the morning that her colourless inner world would
before night become as animated as water under a microscope, and
that without the arrival of a single visitor. The words of Sam and
Humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her
mind the effect of the invading Bard's prelude in the "Castle of
Indolence," at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had
previously appeared the stillness of a void.

Involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time. When she became
conscious of externals it was dusk. The furze-rick was finished; the
men had gone home. Eustacia went upstairs, thinking that she would
take a walk at this her usual time; and she determined that her walk
should be in the direction of Blooms-End, the birthplace of young
Yeobright and the present home of his mother. She had no reason for
walking elsewhere, and why should she not go that way? The scene of a
day-dream is sufficient for a pilgrimage at nineteen. To look at the
palings before the Yeobrights' house had the dignity of a necessary
performance. Strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed
an important errand.

She put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended the hill on
the side towards Blooms-End, where she walked slowly along the valley
for a distance of a mile and a half. This brought her to a spot in
which the green bottom of the dale began to widen, the furze bushes
to recede yet further from the path on each side, till they were
diminished to an isolated one here and there by the increasing
fertility of the soil. Beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a
row of white palings, which marked the verge of the heath in this
latitude. They showed upon the dusky scene that they bordered as
distinctly as white lace on velvet. Behind the white palings was a
little garden; behind the garden an old, irregular, thatched house,
facing the heath, and commanding a full view of the valley. This was
the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose
latter life had been passed in the French capital--the centre and
vortex of the fashionable world.

II

The People at Blooms-End Make Ready

All that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of Eustacia's
ruminations created a bustle of preparation at Blooms-End. Thomasin
had been persuaded by her aunt