One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Thomasin. He
could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had
happened.

"I have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully. "The
captain has let out at the Woman that you and Eustacia Vye are engaged
to be married."

"We are," said Yeobright. "But it may not be yet for a very long time."

"I should hardly think it WOULD be yet for a very long time! You will
take her to Paris, I suppose?" She spoke with weary hopelessness.

"I am not going back to Paris."

"What will you do with a wife, then?"

"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you."

"That's incredible! The place is overrun with schoolmasters. You have no
special qualifications. What possible chance is there for such as you?"

"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education,
which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my
fellow-creatures."

"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they
would have found it out at the universities long before this time."

"Never, Mother. They cannot find it out, because their teachers don't
come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that
is, those who have had no preliminary training. My plan is one for
instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them
with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins."

"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from
entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have
been bad enough; but being----"

"She is a good girl."

"So you think. A Corfu bandmaster's daughter! What has her life been?
Her surname even is not her true one."

"She is Captain Vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her
mother's name. And she is a lady by instinct."

"They call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain."

"He was in the Royal Navy!"

"No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why doesn't he look
after her? No lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day
and night as she does. But that's not all of it. There was something
queer between her and Thomasin's husband at one time--I am as sure of it
as that I stand here."

"Eustacia has told me. He did pay her a little attention a year ago; but
there's no harm in that. I like her all the better."

"Clym," said his mother with firmness, "I have no proofs against her,
unfortu