Bathsheba had
reached a stage at which people cease to have any
appreciative regard for public opinion.
"What makes you think he has gone there?" she said.
"Laban Tall saw him on the Budmouth road this
morning before breakfast."
Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward
heaviness of the past twenty-four hours which had
quenched the vitality of youth in her without sub-
stituting the philosophy of maturer years, and the
resolved to go out and walk a little way. So when
breakfast was over, she put on her bonnet, and took
a direction towards the church. It was nine o'clock,
and the men having returned to work again from their
first meal, she was not likely to meet many of them in
the road. Knowing that Fanny had been laid in the
reprobates' quarter of the graveyard, called in the parish
"behind church." which was invisible from the road, it
was impossible to resist the impulse to enter and look
upon a spot which, from nameless feelings, she at the
same time dreaded to see. She had been unable to
overcome an impression that some connection existed
between her rival and the light through the trees.
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