XLIII

What Henchard saw thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little later date by other people. That Mr. Farfrae “walked with that bankrupt Henchard’s step-daughter, of all Women” became a common topic in the town, the simple perambulating term being used hereabout to...

XXXIV

Next morning, accordingly, she rose at five o’clock, and went into the street. It was not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was as silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues which framed in the borough there...

XXX

Farfrae’s words to his landlady had referred to the removal of his boxes and other effects from his late lodgings to Lucetta’s house. The work was not heavy, but it had been much hindered on account of the frequent pauses necessitated by exclamations of...

XXI

As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked till some mature experience enforces it, so did this High-Place Hall now for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth-Jane, though her ears had heard its name on a hundred occasions. Her mind dwelt...

XVIII

There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth, as the box passenger* foresees the approaching jerk from some channel across the highway. Her mother was ill—too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated her kindly except in moments...

X

While she still sat under the Scotchman’s eyes a man came up to the door, reaching it as Henchard opened the door of the inner office to admit Elizabeth. The new-comer stepped forward like the quicker cripple at Bethesda,* and entered in...

IX

When Elizabeth-Jane opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow air brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if she had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement of the rural life around; not its urban opposite. Bees...

I

One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon Priors,* in Upper Wessex, on foot. They were plainly but...

XXXI

The retort of the furmity-woman before the magistrates had spread; and in four-and-twenty hours there was not a person in Casterbridge who remained unacquainted with the story of Henchard’s mad freak at Weydon Priors Fair, long years before. The amends he had made in...

XXVIII

The next morning Henchard went to the Town-hall below Lucetta’s house, to attend petty sessions,* being still a magistrate for the year by virtue of his late position as mayor. In passing he looked up at her windows, but nothing of her...