own way," he replied. He entered the house, and,
seeing that all her things had not yet been brought down, went up to
her room to look on. He had never been there since she had occupied it.
Evidences of her care, of her endeavours for improvement, were
visible all around, in the form of books, sketches, maps, and little
arrangements for tasteful effects. Henchard had known nothing of these
efforts. He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the
door.

"Look here," he said, in an altered voice--he never called her by
name now--"don't 'ee go away from me. It may be I've spoke roughly to
you--but I've been grieved beyond everything by you--there's something
that caused it."

"By me?" she said, with deep concern. "What have I done?"

"I can't tell you now. But if you'll stop, and go on living as my
daughter, I'll tell you all in time."

But the proposal had come ten minutes too late. She was in the fly--was
already, in imagination, at the house of the lady whose manner had such
charms for her. "Father," she said, as considerately as she could, "I
think it best for us that I go on now. I need not stay long; I shall not
be far away, and if you want me badly I can soon come back again."

He nodded ever so slightly, as a receipt of her decision and no more.
"You are not going far, you say. What will be your address, in case I
wish to write to you? Or am I not to know?"

"Oh yes--certainly. It is only in the town--High-Place Hall!"

"Where?" said Henchard, his face stilling.

She repeated the words. He neither moved nor spoke, and waving her hand
to him in utmost friendliness she signified to the flyman to drive up
the street.

22.

We go back for a moment to the preceding night, to account for
Henchard's attitude.

At the hour when Elizabeth-Jane was contemplating her stealthy
reconnoitring excursion to the abode of the lady of her fancy, he had
been not a little amazed at receiving a letter by hand in Lucetta's
well-known characters. The self-repression, the resignation of her
previous communication had vanished from her mood; she wrote with
some of the natural lightness which had marked her in their early
acquaintance.

HIGH-PLACE HALL

MY DEAR MR. HENCHARD,--Don't be surprised. It is for your good and mine,
as I hope, that I have come to live at Casterbridge--for how long I
cannot tell. That depends upon another; and he is a man, and a merchant,
and a Mayor, and one who has the firs