wetter than the rest; they resembled
dolphins under a fountain, every protuberance and angle of their
clothes dribbling forth a small rill.

Boldwood came close and bade her good morning, with such constraint
that she could not but think he had stepped across to the washing for
its own sake, hoping not to find her there; more, she fancied his
brow severe and his eye slighting. Bathsheba immediately contrived
to withdraw, and glided along by the river till she was a stone's
throw off. She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a
consciousness that love was encircling her like a perfume. Instead
of turning or waiting, Bathsheba went further among the high sedges,
but Boldwood seemed determined, and pressed on till they were
completely past the bend of the river. Here, without being seen,
they could hear the splashing and shouts of the washers above.

"Miss Everdene!" said the farmer.

She trembled, turned, and said "Good morning." His tone was so
utterly removed from all she had expected as a beginning. It was
lowness and quiet accentuated: an emphasis of deep meanings, their
form, at the same time, being scarcely expressed. Silence has
sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied
soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more
impressive than speech. In the same way, to say a little is often to
tell more than to say a great deal. Boldwood told everything in that
word.

As the consciousness expands on learning that what was fancied to
be the rumble of wheels is the reverberation of thunder, so did
Bathsheba's at her intuitive conviction.

"I feel--almost too much--to think," he said, with a solemn
simplicity. "I have come to speak to you without preface. My life
is not my own since I have beheld you clearly, Miss Everdene--I come
to make you an offer of marriage."

Bathsheba tried to preserve an absolutely neutral countenance, and
all the motion she made was that of closing lips which had previously
been a little parted.

"I am now forty-one years old," he went on. "I may have been called
a confirmed bachelor, and I was a confirmed bachelor. I had never
any views of myself as a husband in my earlier days, nor have I made
any calculation on the subject since I have been older. But we all
change, and my change, in this matter, came with seeing you. I have
felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in
every respect. Beyond all things,