were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed
her, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause. At length
the news reached her that he was not going to leave the place. A man
following the same trade as Henchard, but on a very small scale, had
sold his business to Farfrae, who was forthwith about to start as corn
and hay merchant on his own account.

Her heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Donald's, proving
that he meant to remain; and yet, would a man who cared one little bit
for her have endangered his suit by setting up a business in opposition
to Mr. Henchard's? Surely not; and it must have been a passing impulse
only which had led him to address her so softly.

To solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance
were such as to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed
herself up exactly as she had dressed then--the muslin, the spencer, the
sandals, the para-sol--and looked in the mirror The picture glassed back
was in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that fleeting
regard, and no more--"just enough to make him silly, and not enough
to keep him so," she said luminously; and Elizabeth thought, in a much
lower key, that by this time he had discovered how plain and homely was
the informing spirit of that pretty outside.

Hence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to
herself with a mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it, "No, no,
Elizabeth-Jane--such dreams are not for you!" She tried to prevent
herself from seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding fairly well in
the former attempt, in the latter not so completely.

Henchard, who had been hurt at finding that Farfrae did not mean to
put up with his temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when
he learnt what the young man had done as an alternative. It was in
the town-hall, after a council meeting, that he first became aware of
Farfrae's coup for establishing himself independently in the town; and
his voice might have been heard as far as the town-pump expressing his
feelings to his fellow councilmen. These tones showed that, though under
a long reign of self-control he had become Mayor and churchwarden and
what not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath the
rind of Michael Henchard as when he had sold his wife at Weydon Fair.

"Well, he's a friend of mine, and I'm a friend of his--or if we are not,
what are we? 'Od send, if I've