“Good morning, miss,” said the reddleman, taking off his cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of their last meeting.

“Good morning, reddleman,” she said, hardly troubling to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his.  “I did not know you were so near.  Is your van here too?”

Venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to form a dell.  Brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves.  The roof and chimney of Venn’s caravan showed behind the tracery and tangles of the brake.

“You remain near this part?” she asked with more interest.

“Yes, I have business here.”

“Not altogether the selling of reddle?”

“It has nothing to do with that.”

“It has to do with Miss Yeobright?”

Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, “Yes, miss; it is on account of her.”

“On account of your approaching marriage with her?”

Venn flushed through his stain.  “Don’t make sport of me, Miss Vye,” he said.

“It isn’t true?”

“Certainly not.”

She was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere pis aller in Mrs. Yeobright’s mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly standing.  “It was a mere notion of mine,” she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top where she stood.  Owing to the necessary windings of his course his back was at present towards them.  She glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only one way.  Turning to Venn, she said, “Would you allow me to rest a few minutes in your van?  The banks are damp for sitting on.”

“Certainly, miss; I’ll make a place for you.”

She followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling, into which Venn mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the door.

“That is the best I can do for you,” he said, stepping down and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he walked up and down.

Eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway.  Soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddleman’s, a not very friendly “Good day” uttered by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the footfall of one of them in a direction onwards.  Eustacia stretched her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why.  It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more.