s of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces,
what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the
north wall to the garden. Outside the settle candles gutter, locks
of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is
Paradise. Not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters'
backs are as warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn
from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon
plants in a frame.

It was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that Eustacia
was concerned. A face showed itself with marked distinctness against
the dark-tanned wood of the upper part. The owner, who was leaning
against the settle's outer end, was Clement Yeobright, or Clym, as
he was called here; she knew it could be nobody else. The spectacle
constituted an area of two feet in Rembrandt's intensest manner. A
strange power in the lounger's appearance lay in the fact that, though
his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his
face.

To one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a
youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity.
But it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so
many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. The
number of their years may have adequately summed up Jared, Mahalaleel,
and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to
be measured by the intensity of his history.

The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind within was
beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its
idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. The beauty here visible
would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought,
which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there
was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a
wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, "A handsome man."
Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, "A
thoughtful man." But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer
symmetry, and they rated his look as singular.

Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him.
His countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being
thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his
surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of
the four or five years of endeavour wh