ll the spring."

"I suppose--she was immensely taken with him?"

"She is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells
me. And that lad Charley that looks after the horse is all in a daze
about it. The stun-poll has got fondlike of her."

"Is she lively--is she glad? Going to be married so soon--well!"

"It isn't so very soon."

"No; not so very soon."

Wildeve went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within
him. He rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his
hand. When Thomasin entered the room he did not tell her of what
he had heard. The old longing for Eustacia had reappeared in his
soul; and it was mainly because he had discovered that it was another
man's intention to possess her.

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care
for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Wildeve's nature always.
This is the true mark of the man of sentiment. Though Wildeve's
fevered feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it
was of the standard sort. He might have been called the Rousseau of
Egdon.

VII

The Morning and the Evening of a Day

The wedding morning came. Nobody would have imagined from appearances
that Blooms-End had any interest in Mistover that day. A solemn
stillness prevailed around the house of Clym's mother, and there
was no more animation indoors. Mrs. Yeobright, who had declined to
attend the ceremony, sat by the breakfast table in the old room which
communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes listlessly directed
towards the open door. It was the room in which, six months earlier,
the merry Christmas party had met, to which Eustacia came secretly and
as a stranger. The only living thing that entered now was a sparrow;
and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the
room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the
pot-flowers. This roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released
the bird, and went to the door. She was expecting Thomasin, who had
written the night before to state that the time had come when she
would wish to have the money, and that she would if possible call this
day.

Yet Thomasin occupied Mrs. Yeobright's thoughts but slightly as she
looked up the valley of the heath, alive with butterflies, and with
grasshoppers whose husky noises on every side formed a whispered
chorus. A domestic drama, for which the preparations were now being
made a mile or