Eustacia entered her own house; she was excited.  Her grandfather was enjoying himself over the fire, raking about the ashes and exposing the red-hot surface of the turves, so that their lurid glare irradiated the chimney-corner with the hues of a furnace.

“Why is it that we are never friendly with the Yeobrights?” she said, coming forward and stretching her soft hands over the warmth.  “I wish we were.  They seem to be very nice people.”

“Be hanged if I know why,” said the captain.  “I liked the old man well enough, though he was as rough as a hedge.  But you would never have cared to go there, even if you might have, I am well sure.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Your town tastes would find them far too countrified.  They sit in the kitchen, drink mead and elderwine, and sand the floor to keep it clean.  A sensible way of life; but would you like it?”

“I thought Mrs. Yeobright was a ladylike woman?  A curate’s daughter, was she not?”

“Yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and I suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time.  Ah, I recollect that I once accidentally offended her, and I have never seen her since.”

That night was an eventful one to Eustacia’s brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot.  She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one.  Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia’s situation before.  It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the Northern Lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation.  To Queen Scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned from all the courts of Europe it might have seemed not more than interesting.  But amid the circumstances of Eustacia’s life it was as wonderful as a dream could be.

There was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action.  She was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed.  The mazes of the dance were ecstatic.  Soft whispering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in Paradise.  Suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere beneath into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows.  “It must be here,” said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss her.  At that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards.

She cried aloud.  “O that I had seen his face!”