then, when it will be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quite
sure that if I make a little advance mother will be willing to forget
all. It will be rather late before I can get home, as I shall not be
able to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half.
But you will not mind for one evening, dear? What are you thinking of
to make you look so abstracted?"

"I cannot tell you," she said heavily. "I wish we didn't live here,
Clym. The world seems all wrong in this place."

"Well--if we make it so. I wonder if Thomasin has been to Blooms-End
lately. I hope so. But probably not, as she is, I believe, expecting
to be confined in a month or so. I wish I had thought of that before.
Poor mother must indeed be very lonely."

"I don't like you going tonight."

"Why not tonight?"

"Something may be said which will terribly injure me."

"My mother is not vindictive," said Clym, his colour faintly rising.

"But I wish you would not go," Eustacia repeated in a low tone. "If
you agree not to go tonight I promise to go by myself to her house
tomorrow, and make it up with her, and wait till you fetch me."

"Why do you want to do that at this particular time, when at every
previous time that I have proposed it you have refused?"

"I cannot explain further than that I should like to see her alone
before you go," she answered, with an impatient move of her head, and
looking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of a
sanguine temperament than upon such as herself.

"Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go myself you
should want to do what I proposed long ago. If I wait for you to go
tomorrow another day will be lost; and I know I shall be unable to
rest another night without having been. I want to get this settled,
and will. You must visit her afterwards: it will be all the same."

"I could even go with you now?"

"You could scarcely walk there and back without a longer rest than I
shall take. No, not tonight, Eustacia."

"Let it be as you say, then," she replied in the quiet way of one who,
though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, would
let events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to direct
them.

Clym then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stole over
Eustacia for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husband
attributed to the heat of the weather.

In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the heat of summer