mate days!"

CHAPTER XXXI

BLAME--FURY

The next evening Bathsheba, with the idea of getting out of the way
of Mr. Boldwood in the event of his returning to answer her note
in person, proceeded to fulfil an engagement made with Liddy some
few hours earlier. Bathsheba's companion, as a gauge of their
reconciliation, had been granted a week's holiday to visit her
sister, who was married to a thriving hurdler and cattle-crib-maker
living in a delightful labyrinth of hazel copse not far beyond
Yalbury. The arrangement was that Miss Everdene should honour
them by coming there for a day or two to inspect some ingenious
contrivances which this man of the woods had introduced into his
wares.

Leaving her instructions with Gabriel and Maryann, that they were to
see everything carefully locked up for the night, she went out of the
house just at the close of a timely thunder-shower, which had refined
the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath
was dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied
contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath;
and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene. Before her, among
the clouds, there was a contrast in the shape of lairs of fierce
light which showed themselves in the neighbourhood of a hidden sun,
lingering on to the farthest north-west corner of the heavens that
this midsummer season allowed.

She had walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the
day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly
melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the
time of prayer and sleep, when she beheld advancing over Yalbury
hill the very man she sought so anxiously to elude. Boldwood was
stepping on, not with that quiet tread of reserved strength which
was his customary gait, in which he always seemed to be balancing
two thoughts. His manner was stunned and sluggish now.

Boldwood had for the first time been awakened to woman's privileges
in tergiversation even when it involves another person's possible
blight. That Bathsheba was a firm and positive girl, far less
inconsequent than her fellows, had been the very lung of his hope;
for he had held that these qualities would lead her to adhere to a
straight course for consistency's sake, and accept him, though her
fancy might not flood him with the iridescent hues of uncritical
love. But the argument now came back as sorry g