ntrified. They sit in the
kitchen, drink mead and elder-wine, and sand the floor to keep it clean.
A sensible way of life; but how would you like it?"

"I thought Mrs. Yeobright was a ladylike woman? A curate's daughter, was
she not?"

"Yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and I suppose
she has taken kindly to it by this time. Ah, I recollect that I once
accidentally offended her, and I have never seen her since."

That night was an eventful one to Eustacia's brain, and one which she
hardly ever forgot. She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from
Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable
one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was
certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia's situation before. It had
as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as
the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as
crowded with figures as a coronation. To Queen Scheherazade the dream
might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just
returned from all the courts of Europe it might have seemed not more
than interesting. But amid the circumstances of Eustacia's life it was
as wonderful as a dream could be.

There was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a
less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the
general brilliancy of the action. She was dancing to wondrous music, and
her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through
the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed.
The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. Soft whispering came into her ear
from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in Paradise.
Suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one
of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere into an iridescent
hollow, arched with rainbows. "It must be here," said the voice by her
side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss
her. At that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into
fragments like a pack of cards.

She cried aloud. "O that I had seen his face!"

Eustacia awoke. The cracking had been that of the window shutter
downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now
slowly increasing to Nature's meagre allowance at this sickly time of
the year. "O that I had seen his face!" she said again. "'Twas meant for
Mr