resting and travelled cousin of hers? There was no knowing what
affection might not soon break out between the two, so constantly
in each other's society, and not a distracting object near. Clym's
boyish love for her might have languished, but it might easily be
revived again.

Eustacia was nettled by her own contrivances. What a sheer waste of
herself to be dressed thus while another was shining to advantage! Had
she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven
and earth to get here in a natural manner. The power of her face all
lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her
coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a
sense of the doom of Echo. "Nobody here respects me," she said. She
had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she
would be treated as a boy. The slight, though of her own causing, and
self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so
sensitive had the situation made her.

Women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress. To look far
below those who, like a certain fair personator of Polly Peachum early
in the last century, and another of Lydia Languish early in this, have
won not only love but ducal coronets into the bargain, whole shoals of
them have reached to the initial satisfaction of getting love almost
whence they would. But the Turkish Knight was denied even the chance
of achieving this by the fluttering ribbons which she dared not brush
aside.

Yeobright returned to the room without his cousin. When within two or
three feet of Eustacia he stopped, as if again arrested by a thought.
He was gazing at her. She looked another way, disconcerted, and
wondered how long this purgatory was to last. After lingering a few
seconds he passed on again.

To court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with
certain perfervid women. Conflicting sensations of love, fear, and
shame reduced Eustacia to a state of the utmost uneasiness. To escape
was her great and immediate desire. The other mummers appeared to be
in no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her
that she preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to
the door as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out.

The calm, lone scene reassured her. She went forward to the palings
and leant over them, looking at the moon. She had stood thus but a
little time when the door again