do!"

Clym looked at the heath. "I like Venn well enough," he answered at
last. "He is a very honest and at the same time astute man. He is clever
too, as is proved by his having got you to favour him. But really,
Thomasin, he is not quite--"

"Gentleman enough for me? That is just what I feel. I am sorry now that
I asked you, and I won't think any more of him. At the same time I must
marry him if I marry anybody--that I WILL say!"

"I don't see that," said Clym, carefully concealing every clue to his
own interrupted intention, which she plainly had not guessed. "You might
marry a professional man, or somebody of that sort, by going into the
town to live and forming acquaintances there."

"I am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly as I always have
been. Do not you yourself notice my countrified ways?"

"Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little; but I don't now."

"That's because you have got countrified too. O, I couldn't live in a
street for the world! Egdon is a ridiculous old place; but I have got
used to it, and I couldn't be happy anywhere else at all."

"Neither could I," said Clym.

"Then how could you say that I should marry some town man? I am sure,
say what you will, that I must marry Diggory, if I marry at all. He has
been kinder to me than anybody else, and has helped me in many ways that
I don't know of!" Thomasin almost pouted now.

"Yes, he has," said Clym in a neutral tone. "Well, I wish with all my
heart that I could say, marry him. But I cannot forget what my mother
thought on that matter, and it goes rather against me not to respect her
opinion. There is too much reason why we should do the little we can to
respect it now."

"Very well, then," sighed Thomasin. "I will say no more."

"But you are not bound to obey my wishes. I merely say what I think."

"O no--I don't want to be rebellious in that way," she said sadly. "I
had no business to think of him--I ought to have thought of my family.
What dreadfully bad impulses there are in me!" Her lips trembled, and
she turned away to hide a tear.

Clym, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste, was in a
measure relieved to find that at any rate the marriage question in
relation to himself was shelved. Through several succeeding days he saw
her at different times from the window of his room moping disconsolately
about the garden. He was half angry with her for choosing Venn; then he
was grieved at having put himse