ness to
be reconciled, meet her half-way by welcoming her to our house, or by
accepting a welcome to hers?"

At first Eustacia closed her lips as if she would rather do anything
on the whole globe than what he suggested. But the lines of her mouth
softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened;
and she said, "I will put nothing in your way; but after what has
passed it is asking too much that I go and make advances."

"You never distinctly told me what did pass between you."

"I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more bitterness is
sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that
may be the case here." She paused a few moments, and added, "If you
had never returned to your native place, Clym, what a blessing it
would have been for you!... It has altered the destinies of--"

"Three people."

"Five," Eustacia thought; but she kept that in.

V

The Journey across the Heath

Thursday, the thirty-first of August, was one of a series of days
during which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were
treats; when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called
"earthquakes" by apprehensive children; when loose spokes were
discovered in the wheels of carts and carriages; and when stinging
insects haunted the air, the earth, and every drop of water that was
to be found.

In Mrs. Yeobright's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind
flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at
eleven; and even stiff cabbages were limp by noon.

It was about eleven o'clock on this day that Mrs. Yeobright started
across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting
reconciled with him and Eustacia, in conformity with her words to the
reddleman. She had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the
heat of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found
that this was not to be done. The sun had branded the whole heath
with his mark, even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness
under the dry blazes of the few preceding days. Every valley was
filled with air like that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of
the winter water-courses, which formed summer paths, had undergone
a species of incineration since the drought had set in.

In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Yeobright would have found no
inconvenience in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack
made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman