I have resolved to throw in my lot with Mr.
Vannicock, and I hope rather than expect you will forgive me .-- L.
Then, with hardly a scrap of luggage, she went, ascending to the ridge in the dusk of early evening.

Almost on the very spot where her husband had stood at their last tryst she beheld the outline of Vannicock, who had come all the way from Bristol to fetch her.
'I don't like meeting here--it is so unlucky!' she cried to him.

'For God's sake let us have a place of our own.

Go back to the milestone, and I'll come on.' He went back to the milestone that stands on the north slope of the ridge, where the old and new roads diverge, and she joined him there.
She was taciturn and sorrowful when he asked her why she would not meet him on the top.

At last she inquired how they were going to travel.
He explained that he proposed to walk to Mellstock Hill, on the other side of Casterbridge, where a fly was waiting to take them by a cross-cut into the Ivell Road, and onward to that town.