LITMIR.BIZ

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into the candle-flame. “Poor Diggory!” she said, and then aroused herself to other things.

      The next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. Some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for Thomasin, and remarks on domestic details were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about her future as Wildeve’s wife.

      The appointed morning came. The arrangement with Wildeve was that he should meet her at the church to guard against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected them had they been seen walking off together in the usual country way.

      Aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the bride was dressing. The sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of Thomasin’s hair, which she always wore braided. It was braided according to a calendar system — the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. On ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary Sundays in fours; at Maypolings, gipsyings, and the like, she braided it in fives. Years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. She had braided it in sevens today.

      “I have been thinking that I will wear my blue silk after all,” she said. “It is my wedding day, even though there may be something sad about the time. I mean,” she added, anxious to correct any wrong impression, “not sad in itself, but in its having had great disappointment and trouble before it.”

      Mrs. Yeobright breathed in a way which might have been called a sigh. “I almost wish Clym had been at home,” she said. “Of course you chose the time because of his absence.”

      “Partly. I have felt that I acted unfairly to him in not telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, I thought I would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear.”

      “You are a practical little woman,” said Mrs. Yeobright, smiling. “I wish you and he — no, I don’t wish anything. There, it is nine o’clock,” she interrupted, hearing a whizz and a dinging downstairs.

      “I told Damon I would leave at nine,” said Thomasin, hastening out of the room.

      Her aunt followed. When Thomasin was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, Mrs. Yeobright looked reluctantly at her, and said, “It is a shame to let you go alone.”

      “It is necessary,” said Thomasin.

      “At any rate,” added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, “I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. If Clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. I wish to show Mr. Wildeve that I bear him no ill-will. Let the past be forgotten. Well, God bless you! There, I don’t believe in old superstitions, but I’ll do it.” She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again.

      A few steps further, and she looked back. “Did you call me, Aunt?” she tremulously inquired. “Good-bye!”

      Moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon Mrs. Yeobright’s worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again. “O— Tamsie,” said the elder, weeping, “I don’t like to let you go.”

      “I— I am —” Thomasin began, giving way likewise. But, quelling her grief, she said “Good-bye!” again and went on.

      Then Mrs. Yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley — a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.

      But the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man.

      The hour chosen for the ceremony by Thomasin and Wildeve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin Clym, who was returning the same morning. To own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident.

      She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half an hour when Yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house.

      “I had an early breakfast,” he said to his mother after greeting her. “Now I could eat a little more.”

      They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that Thomasin had not yet come downstairs, “What’s this I have heard about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve?”

      “It is true in many points,” said Mrs. Yeobright quietly; “but it is all right now, I hope.” She looked at the clock.

      “True?”

      “Thomasin is gone to him today.”

      Clym pushed away his breakfast. “Then there is a scandal of some sort, and that’s what’s the matter with Thomasin. Was it this that made her ill?”

      “Yes. Not a scandal — a misfortune. I will tell you all about it, Clym. You must not be angry, but you must listen, and you’ll find that what we have done has been done for the best.”

      She then told him the circumstances. All that he had known of the affair before he returned from Paris was that there had existed an attachment between Thomasin and Wildeve, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of Thomasin, looked upon in a little more favourable light. When she, therefore, proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled.

      “And she determined that the wedding should be over before you came back,” said Mrs. Yeobright, “that there might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. That’s why she has gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning.”

      “But I can’t understand it,” said Yeobright, rising. “’Tis so unlike her. I can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate return home. But why didn’t you let me know when the wedding was going to be — the first time?”

      “Well, I felt vexed with her just then. She seemed to me to be obstinate; and when I found that you were nothing in her mind I vowed that she should be nothing in yours. I felt that she was only my niece after all; I told her she might marry, but that I should take no interest in it, and should not bother you about it either.”

      “It wouldn’t have been bothering me. Mother, you did wrong.”

      “I thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because of it, so I said nothing. Of course, if they had married at that time in a proper manner, I should have told you at once.”

      “Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!”

      “Yes. Unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time. It may, considering he’s the same man.”

      “Yes, and I believe it will. Was it right to let her go? Suppose Wildeve is really a bad fellow?”

      “Then he won’t come, and she’ll come home again.”

      “You should have looked more into it.”

      “It is useless to say that,” his mother answered with an impatient look of sorrow. “You don’t know how bad it has been here with us all these weeks, Clym. You don’t know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a woman. You don’t know the sleepless nights we’ve had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed between us since that Fifth of November. I hope never to pass seven such weeks again. Tamsin has not gone outside the door, and I have been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble straight.”

      “No,” he said slowly. “Upon the whole I don’t blame you. But just consider how sudden it seems to me. Here was I,

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