served admiration, or at least study, on its own
account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since
the Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But its
reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but rich enough. A
timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no
less than of other human things, had prevented artistic superfluity.

Men had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels
and packing-cases, rendering the door and hall within like a public
thoroughfare. Elizabeth trotted through the open door in the dusk,
but becoming alarmed at her own temerity she went quickly out again by
another which stood open in the lofty wall of the back court. To her
surprise she found herself in one of the little-used alleys of the town.
Looking round at the door which had given her egress, by the light of
the solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was arched and
old--older even than the house itself. The door was studded, and the
keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a
comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of Casterbridge
boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open mouth; and the
blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if they had been
eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly
lamp-glimmer that she could not bear to look at it--the first unpleasant
feature of her visit.

The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering
mask suggested one thing above all others as appertaining to the
mansion's past history--intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to
come unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town--the old play-house,
the old bull-stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless
infants had been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of its
conveniences undoubtedly.

She turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward, which was
down the alley, but hearing footsteps approaching in that quarter, and
having no great wish to be found in such a place at such a time she
quickly retreated. There being no other way out she stood behind a brick
pier till the intruder should have gone his ways.

Had she watched she would have been surprised. She would have seen that
the pedestrian on coming up made straight for the arched doorway: that
as he paused with his hand upon the latch the lamplight fell upon the
face of Henchard.