Her aunt followed.  When Thomasin was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, Mrs. Yeobright looked reluctantly at her, and said, “It is a shame to let you go alone.”

“It is necessary,” said Thomasin.

“At any rate,” added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, “I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me.  If Clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too.  I wish to show Mr. Wildeve that I bear him no ill-will.  Let the past be forgotten.  Well, God bless you!  There, I don’t believe in old superstitions, but I’ll do it.”  She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again.

A few steps further, and she looked back.  “Did you call me, aunt?” she tremulously inquired.  “Good-bye!”

Moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon Mrs. Yeobright’s worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again.  “O—­Tamsie,” said the elder, weeping, “I don’t like to let you go.”

“I—­I—­am—­” Thomasin began, giving way likewise.  But, quelling her grief, she said “Good-bye!” again and went on.

Then Mrs. Yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley—­a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.

But the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man.

The hour chosen for the ceremony by Thomasin and Wildeve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin Clym, who was returning the same morning.  To own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved.  It was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident.

She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half an hour when Yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house.

“I had an early breakfast,” he said to his mother after greeting her.  “Now I could eat a little more.”

They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that Thomasin had not yet come downstairs, “What’s this I have heard about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve?”

“It is true in many points,” said Mrs. Yeobright quietly; “but it is all right now, I hope.”  She looked at the clock.

“True?”

“Thomasin is gone to him today.”

Clym pushed away his breakfast.  “Then there is a scandal of some sort, and that’s what’s the matter with Thomasin.  Was it this that made her ill?”

“Yes.  Not a scandal:  a misfortune.  I will tell you all about it, Clym.  You must not be angry, but you must listen, and you’ll find that what we have done has been done for the best.”