ever what had
attracted him in her unfledged maid-servant. The mistress was almost as
unaccustomed as the maiden herself to the end-of-the-age young man, or
she might have wondered less. Raye, having looked about him awhile, left
abruptly, without regard to the service that was proceeding; and Mrs.
Harnham--lonely, impressionable creature that she was--took no further
interest in praising the Lord. She wished she had married a London man
who knew the subtleties of love-making as they were evidently known to
him who had mistakenly caressed her hand.

CHAPTER III

The calendar at Melchester had been light, occupying the court only a few
hours; and the assizes at Casterbridge, the next county-town on the
Western Circuit, having no business for Raye, he had not gone thither. At
the next town after that they did not open till the following Monday,
trials to begin on Tuesday morning. In the natural order of things Raye
would have arrived at the latter place on Monday afternoon; but it was
not till the middle of Wednesday that his gown and grey wig, curled in
tiers, in the best fashion of Assyrian bas-reliefs, were seen blowing and
bobbing behind him as he hastily walked up the High Street from his
lodgings. But though he entered the assize building there was nothing
for him to do, and sitting at the blue baize table in the well of the
court, he mended pens with a mind far away from the case in progress.
Thoughts of unpremeditated conduct, of which a week earlier he would not
have believed himself capable, threw him into a mood of dissatisfied
depression.

He had contrived to see again the pretty rural maiden Anna, the day after
the fair, had walked out of the city with her to the earthworks of Old
Melchester, and feeling a violent fancy for her, had remained in
Melchester all Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; by persuasion obtaining walks
and meetings with the girl six or seven times during the interval; had in
brief won her, body and soul.

He supposed it must have been owing to the seclusion in which he had
lived of late in town that he had given way so unrestrainedly to a
passion for an artless creature whose inexperience had, from the first,
led her to place herself unreservedly in his hands. Much he deplored
trifling with her feelings for the sake of a passing desire; and he could
only hope that she might not live to suffer on his account.

She had begged him to come to her again; entreated him; wept. He ha