f-forgotten One

Eustacia's journey was at first as vague in direction as that of
thistledown on the wind. She did not know what to do. She wished it
had been night instead of morning, that she might at least have borne
her misery without the possibility of being seen. Tracing mile after
mile along between the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs,
she at length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house. She
found the front door closed and locked. Mechanically she went round
to the end where the stable was, and on looking in at the stable-door
she saw Charley standing within.

"Captain Vye is not at home?" she said.

"No, ma'am," said the lad in a flutter of feeling; "he's gone to
Weatherbury, and won't be home till night. And the servant is gone
home for a holiday. So the house is locked up."

Eustacia's face was not visible to Charley as she stood at the
doorway, her back being to the sky, and the stable but indifferently
lighted; but the wildness of her manner arrested his attention. She
turned and walked away across the enclosure to the gate, and was
hidden by the bank.

When she had disappeared Charley, with misgiving in his eyes, slowly
came from the stable door, and going to another point in the bank he
looked over. Eustacia was leaning against it on the outside, her face
covered with her hands, and her head pressing the dewy heather which
bearded the bank's outer side. She appeared to be utterly indifferent
to the circumstance that her bonnet, hair, and garments were becoming
wet and disarranged by the moisture of her cold, harsh pillow.
Clearly something was wrong.

Charley had always regarded Eustacia as Eustacia had regarded Clym
when she first beheld him--as a romantic and sweet vision, scarcely
incarnate. He had been so shut off from her by the dignity of her
look and the pride of her speech, except at that one blissful interval
when he was allowed to hold her hand, that he had hardly deemed her
a woman, wingless and earthly, subject to household conditions and
domestic jars. The inner details of her life he had only conjectured.
She had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit in which the
whole of his own was but a point; and this sight of her leaning like a
helpless, despairing creature against a wild wet bank filled him with
an amazed horror. He could no longer remain where he was. Leaping
over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly, "You
are poorly, ma'a