“Gave it away?”

“Yes.  To Miss Vye.  She has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly.”

“Miss Vye was there too?”

“Ay, ’a b’lieve she was.”

When Clym came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, “The urn you had meant for me you gave away.”

Yeobright made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it.

The early weeks of the year passed on.  Yeobright certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between Mistover and Rainbarrow.

The month of March arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance.  The awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness.  The pool outside the bank by Eustacia’s dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a state of great animation when silently watched awhile.  A timid animal world had come to life for the season.  Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumble-bees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a gong.

On an evening such as this Yeobright descended into the Blooms-End valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it.  His walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy tread.  Before entering upon his mother’s premises he stopped and breathed.  The light which shone forth on him from the window revealed that his face was flushed and his eye bright.  What it did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there.  The abiding presence of this impress was so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed as if his mother might say, “What red spot is that glowing upon your mouth so vividly?”

But he entered soon after.  The tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother.  She did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat.  His mother’s taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care.  He knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him.  These half-silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now.  At last Yeobright made a beginning of what was intended to strike at the whole root of the matter.

“Five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely a word.  What’s the use of it, mother?”

“None,” said she, in a heart-swollen tone.  “But there is only too good a reason.”