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 remained thus, overcome by her forebodings, the old clock
indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. Soon after, faint sounds floated
to her ear from afar over the hills. The breeze came from that
quarter, and it had brought with it the notes of distant bells, gaily
starting off in a peal: one, two, three, four, five. The ringers at
East Egdon were announcing the nuptials of Eustacia and her son.

"Then it is over," she murmured. "Well, well! and life too will be
over soon. And why should I go on scalding my face like this? Cry
about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the
whole piece. And yet we say, 'a time to laugh!'"

Towards evening Wildeve came. Since Thomasin's marriage Mrs. Yeobright
had shown towards him that grim friendliness which at last arises in
all such cases of undesired affinity. The vision of what ought to
have been is thrown aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human
endeavour listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. Wildeve, to
do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife's aunt; and
it was with no surprise that she saw him enter now.

"Thomasin has not been able to come, as she promised to do," he
replied to her inquiry, which had been anxious, for she knew that
her niece was badly in want of money. "The captain came down last
night and personally pressed her to join them today. So, not to be
unpleasant, she determined to go. They fetched her in the pony-chaise,
and are going to bring her back."

"Then it is done," said Mrs. Yeobright.