out of the way of a sight that would
sadden them." He kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out.

When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to
herself, "Two wasted lives--his and mine. And I am come to this! Will
it drive me out of my mind?"

She cast about for any possible course which offered the least
improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She
imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become
of her would say, "Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!"
To Eustacia the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that
death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven should
go much further.

Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, "But I'll shake it off.
Yes, I WILL shake it off! No one shall know my suffering. I'll be
bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and I'll laugh in derision. And
I'll begin by going to this dance on the green."

She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous
care. To an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost
seem reasonable. The gloomy corner into which accident as much as
indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate
partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme
Power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed
in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than
a blessing.

It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready
for her walk. There was material enough in the picture for twenty new
conquests. The rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when
she sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her
outdoor attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it,
devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its
environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation
between flesh and clothes. The heat of the day had scarcely declined
as yet, and she went along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there
being ample time for her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in
their leafage whenever her path lay through them, which now formed
miniature forests, though not one stem of them would remain to bud
the next year.

The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawn-like
oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux
of the heath district. The brakes of furze and fern terminat