gh Wildeve's fevered
feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the
standard sort. His might have been called the Rousseau of Egdon.

7--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 two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than if
enacted before her. She tried to dismiss the vision, and walked about
the garden plot; but her eyes ever and anon sought out the direction
of the parish church to which Mistover belonged, and her excited fancy
clove the hills which divided the building from her eyes. The morning
wore away. Eleven o'clock struck--could it be that the wedding was
then in progress? It must be so. She went on imagining the scene at
the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. She
pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony carriage
drove up in which, as Thomasin had learnt, they were going to perform
the short journey. Then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel
and kneel; and the service seemed to go on.

She covered her face with her hands. "O, it is a mistake!" she groaned.
"And he will rue it some day, and think of me!"

While she remain