Hearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head
and glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Henchard--now habited
no longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business--was
pausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was
looking from the window adjoining her own. Henchard it appeared, had
gone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his acquaintance of
the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Donald Farfrae opening
the window further.

"And you are off soon, I suppose?" said Henchard upwards.

"Yes--almost this moment, sir," said the other. "Maybe I'll walk on till
the coach makes up on me."

"Which way?"

"The way ye are going."

"Then shall we walk together to the top o' town?"

"If ye'll wait a minute," said the Scotchman.

In a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Henchard looked at the
bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young man's
departure. "Ah, my lad," he said, "you should have been a wise man, and
have stayed with me."

"Yes, yes--it might have been wiser," said Donald, looking
microscopically at the houses that were furthest off. "It is only
telling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague."

They had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn,
and Elizabeth-Jane heard no more. She saw that they continued
in conversation, Henchard turning to the other occasionally, and
emphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thus they passed the King's Arms
Hotel, the Market House, St. Peter's churchyard wall, ascending to the
upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of corn;
when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road, and were out
of view.

"He was a good man--and he's gone," she said to herself. "I was nothing
to him, and there was no reason why he should have wished me good-bye."

The simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself
out of the following little fact: when the Scotchman came out at the
door he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he had looked away
again without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word.

"You are still thinking, mother," she said, when she turned inwards.

"Yes; I am thinking of Mr. Henchard's sudden liking for that young man.
He was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are
not related to him at all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?"

While they debated this