" No-i'll not burn it
-i'll keep it in memory of her, poor thing!" she added,
snatching back her hand.
CHAPTER XLIX
OAK'S ADVANCEMENT -- A GREAT HOPE
THE later autumn and the winter drew on apace,
and the leaves lay thick upon the turf of the glades
and the mosses of the woods. Bathsheba, having
previously been living in a state of suspended feeling
which was not suspense, now lived in a mood of
quietude which was not precisely peacefulness. While
she had known him to be alive she could have thought
of his death with equanimity; but now that it might be
she had lost him, she regretted that he was not hers
still. She kept the farm going, raked in her profits
without caring keenly about them, and expended
money on ventures because she had done so in bygone
days, which, though not long gone by, seemed infinitely
removed from her present. She looked back upon that
past over a great gulf, as if she were now a dead person,
having the faculty of meditation still left in her, by
means of which, like the mouldering gentlefolk of the
poet's story, she could sit and ponder what a gift life
used to be.
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