ce
the time of Wildeve's death, eighteen months before; since the day of
her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage.

"How pretty you look today, Thomasin!" he said. "Is it because of the
Maypole?"

"Not altogether." And then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which
he did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to be
rather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself.
Could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please
him?

He recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks,
when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they
had formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye.
What if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as
it had formerly been? To Yeobright any possibility of this sort was
a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it.
Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during
Eustacia's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. His passion for
her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on
hand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyish
loves. Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be
a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and
sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.

He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic
brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock,
with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house,
he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden,
through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. He could not
bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried
hard.

Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back by the same
path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. The
boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from
behind, he could not see if the May party had all gone till he had
passed through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door.
Thomasin was standing within the porch alone.

She looked at him reproachfully. "You went away just when it began,
Clym," she said.

"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them, of course?"

"No, I did not."

"You appeared to be dressed on purpose."

"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were there.