ietly. "She came back to my house after seeing
Eustacia."

"The worst thing I dreaded has come to pass. Was Mother much disturbed
when she came to you, Thomasin?"

"Yes."

"Very much indeed?"

"Yes."

Clym leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his
eyes with his hand.

"Don't trouble about it, Clym. They may get to be friends."

He shook his head. "Not two people with inflammable natures like theirs.
Well, what must be will be."

"One thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost."

"I would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen."

Amid these jarring events Yeobright felt one thing to be
indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in his
scholastic plans. With this view he read far into the small hours during
many nights.

One morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a
strange sensation in his eyes. The sun was shining directly upon the
window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged
him to close his eyelids quickly. At every new attempt to look about
him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and excoriating
tears ran down his cheeks. He was obliged to tie a bandage over his brow
while dressing; and during the day it could not be abandoned. Eustacia
was thoroughly alarmed. On finding that the case was no better the next
morning they decided to send to Anglebury for a surgeon.

Towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute
inflammation induced by Clym's night studies, continued in spite of a
cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time.

Fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so
anxious to hasten, Clym was transformed into an invalid. He was shut
up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition would
have been one of absolute misery had not Eustacia read to him by the
glimmer of a shaded lamp. He hoped that the worst would soon be over;
but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that although
he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course of a
month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of any
description, would have to be given up for a long time to come.

One week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the
gloom of the young couple. Dreadful imaginings occurred to Eustacia, but
she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband.