: send me great love from somewhere, else I shall die.«
    Her high gods were William the Conqueror, Strafford, and Napoleon
Buonaparte, as they had appeared in the Lady's History used at the establishment
in which she was educated. Had she been a mother she would have christened her
boys such names as Saul or Sisera in preference to Jacob or David, neither of
whom she admired. At school she had used to side with the Philistines in several
battles, and had wondered if Pontius Pilate were as handsome as he was frank and
fair.
    Thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed, weighed in relation
to her situation among the very rereward of thinkers, very original. Her
instincts towards social nonconformity were at the root of this. In the matter
of holidays, her mood was that of horses who, when turned out to grass, enjoy
looking upon their kind at work on the highway. She only valued rest to herself
when it came in the midst of other people's labour. Hence she hated Sundays when
all was at rest, and often said they would be the death of her. To see the
heathmen in their Sunday condition, that is, with their hands in their pockets,
their boots newly oiled, and not laced up (a particularly Sunday sign), walking
leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut during the week, and
kicking them critically as if their use were unknown, was a fearful heaviness to
her. To relieve the tedium of this untimely day she would overhaul the cupboards
containing her grandfather's old charts and other rubbish, humming
Saturday-night ballads of the country people the while. But on Saturday nights
she would frequently sing a psalm, and it was always on a week-day that she read
the Bible, that she might be unoppressed with a sense of doing her duty.
    Such views of life were to some extent the natural begettings of her
situation upon her nature. To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was
like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the
heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which
would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious
woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman
saturnine.
    Eustacia had got beyond the vision of some marriage of inexpressible glory;
yet, though her emotions were in full vigour, she cared for no meaner union.
Thus we see her in a strange state of isolation. To have lost the godlike
