When Yeobright was not with Eustacia he was sitting slavishly over his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. These meetings were carried on with the greatest secrecy.
One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Thomasin. He could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had happened.
"I have been told an incomprehensible thing," she said mournfully. "The captain has let out at the Woman that you and Eustacia Vye are engaged to be married."
"We are," said Yeobright. "But it may not be yet for a very long time."
"I should hardly think it WOULD be yet for a very long time! You will take her to Paris, I suppose?" She spoke with weary hopelessness.
"I am not going back to Paris."
"What will you do with a wife, then?"
"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you."
"That's incredible! The place is overrun with schoolmasters. You have no special qualifications. What possible chance is there for such as you?"
"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education, which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my fellow-creatures."
"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time."
"Never, Mother. They cannot find it out, because their teachers don't come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that is, those who have had no preliminary training. My plan is one for instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins."
"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have been bad enough; but being----"
"She is a good girl."
"So you think. A Corfu bandmaster's daughter! What has her life been? Her surname even is not her true one."
"She is Captain Vye's granddaughter, and her father merely took her mother's name. And she is a lady by instinct."
"They call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain."
"He was in the Royal Navy!"
"No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why doesn't he look after her? No lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day and night as she does. But that's not all of it. There was something queer between her and Thomasin's husband at one time--I am as sure of it as that I stand here."