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"How pretty you look today, Thoether" And then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which he did not specially observe, though herthat she was only addressing himself Could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please hihout the last feeeks, when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they had forirl under his mother's eye What if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as it had forht any possibility of this sort was a serious ht of it Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during Eustacia's lifetirave with her His passion for her had occurred too far on in his h on hand for another fire of that sort, ashiain, 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 a its members to blon his house, he withdrew froh the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight He could not bear to reh he had tried hard

Nothing was seen of him for four hours When he came back by the sareen thing The boisterousthe premises as he did froone till he had passed through Thomasin's division of the house to the front door Tho within the porch alone

She looked at hian, 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 One is there now"