He furtively said to a neighbour, "Is Miss Everdene considered handsome ?" "Oh yes; she was a good deal noticed the first time she came, if you remember.

A very handsome girl indeed." A man is never more credulous than in receiving favourable opinions on the beauty of a woman he is half, or quite, in love with; a mere child's word on the point has the weight of an R.A.'s.

Boldwood was satisfied now.
And this charming woman had in effect said to him, "Marry me." Why should she have done that strange thing?
Boldwood's blindness to the difference between approving of what circumstances suggest, and originating what they do not suggest, was well matched by Bathsheba's insensibility to the possibly great issues of little beginnings.
She was at this moment coolly dealing with a dashing young farmer, adding up accounts with him as indifferently as if his face had been the pages of a ledger.

It was evident that such a nature as his had no attraction for a woman of Bathsheba's taste.

But Boldwood grew hot down to his hands with an incipient jealousy; he trod for the first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell." His first impulse was to go and thrust himself between them.