“Not when you know all.  I have been wanting to speak about this, and I am glad the subject is begun.  The reason, of course, is Eustacia Vye.  Well, I confess I have seen her lately, and have seen her a good many times.”

“Yes, yes; and I know what that amounts to.  It troubles me, Clym.  You are wasting your life here; and it is solely on account of her.  If it had not been for that woman you would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all.”

Clym looked hard at his mother.  “You know that is not it,” he said.

“Well, I know you had decided to attempt it before you saw her; but that would have ended in intentions.  It was very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice.  I fully expected that in the course of a month or two you would have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have been by this time back again to Paris in some business or other.  I can understand objections to the diamond trade—­I really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you even though it might have made you a millionaire.  But now I see how mistaken you are about this girl I doubt if you could be correct about other things.”

“How am I mistaken in her?”

“She is lazy and dissatisfied.  But that is not all of it.  Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?”

“Well, there are practical reasons,” Clym began, and then almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight of argument which could be brought against his statement.  “If I take a school an educated woman would be invaluable as a help to me.”

“What! you really mean to marry her?”

“It would be premature to state that plainly.  But consider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it.  She—­”

“Don’t suppose she has any money.  She hasn’t a farthing.”

“She is excellently educated, and would make a good matron in a boarding-school.  I candidly own that I have modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should satisfy you.  I no longer adhere to my intention of giving with my own mouth rudimentary education to the lowest class.  I can do better.  I can establish a good private school for farmers’ sons, and without stopping the school I can manage to pass examinations.  By this means, and by the assistance of a wife like her—­”

“Oh, Clym!”

“I shall ultimately, I hope, be at the head of one of the best schools in the county.”

Yeobright had enunciated the word “her” with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet.  Hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could, in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman.

“You are blinded, Clym,” she said warmly.  “It was a bad day for you when you first set eyes on her.  And your scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to justify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your conscience on the irrational situation you are in.”