to me I am not disposed to upbraid you.--In haste,
yours always,

"LUCETTA."

The excitement which these announcements produced in Henchard's gloomy
soul was to him most pleasurable. He sat over his dining-table long and
dreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the sentiments which
had run to waste since his estrangement from Elizabeth-Jane and Donald
Farfrae gathered around Lucetta before they had grown dry. She was
plainly in a very coming-on disposition for marriage. But what else
could a poor woman be who had given her time and her heart to him
so thoughtlessly, at that former time, as to lose her credit by it?
Probably conscience no less than affection had brought her here. On the
whole he did not blame her.

"The artful little woman!" he said, smiling (with reference to Lucetta's
adroit and pleasant manoeuvre with Elizabeth-Jane).

To feel that he would like to see Lucetta was with Henchard to start
for her house. He put on his hat and went. It was between eight and nine
o'clock when he reached her door. The answer brought him was that Miss
Templeman was engaged for that evening; but that she would be happy to
see him the next day.

"That's rather like giving herself airs!" he thought. "And considering
what we--" But after all, she plainly had not expected him, and he took
the refusal quietly. Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day. "These
cursed women--there's not an inch of straight grain in 'em!" he said.

Let us follow the train of Mr. Henchard's thought as if it were a
clue line, and view the interior of High-Place Hall on this particular
evening.

On Elizabeth-Jane's arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an
elderly woman to go upstairs and take off her things. She replied with
great earnestness that she would not think of giving that trouble, and
on the instant divested herself of her bonnet and cloak in the passage.
She was then conducted to the first floor on the landing, and left to
find her way further alone.

The room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small
drawing-room, and on a sofa with two cylindrical pillows reclined a
dark-haired, large-eyed, pretty woman, of unmistakably French extraction
on one side or the other. She was probably some years older than
Elizabeth, and had a sparkling light in her eye. In front of the sofa
was a small table, with a pack of cards scattered upon it faces upward.

The attitude had been so full of abandonment that she bound