The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

a well-known and respected widow of the neighbourhood, of a standing which can only be expressed by the word genteel. Her face, encom-passed by the blackness of the receding heath, showed white-ly, and with-out half-lights, like a cameo. She was a woman of middle-age, with well-formed features of the type usually found where perspi-cacity is the chief quality enthroned within. At moments she seemed to be regarding issues from a Nebo denied to others around. She had something of an estranged mien; the solitude exhaled from the heath was concentrated in this face that had risen from it. The air with which she looked at the heathmen betokened a certain unconcern at their presence, or at what might be their opinions of her for walking in that lonely spot at such an hour, thus indirectly implying that in some respect or other they were not up to her level. The explanation lay in the fact that though her husband had been a small farmer she herself was a curate's daughter, who had once dreamt of doing better things.