o," said Farfrae.

"Do you remember my telling 'ee how it all began and how it ended?

"Yes."

"Well, I have offered to marry her now that I can; but she won't marry
me. Now what would you think of her--I put it to you?"

"Well, ye owe her nothing more now," said Farfrae heartily.

"It is true," said Henchard, and went on.

That he had looked up from a letter to ask his questions completely shut
out from Farfrae's mind all vision of Lucetta as the culprit. Indeed,
her present position was so different from that of the young woman of
Henchard's story as of itself to be sufficient to blind him absolutely
to her identity. As for Henchard, he was reassured by Farfrae's words
and manner against a suspicion which had crossed his mind. They were not
those of a conscious rival.

Yet that there was rivalry by some one he was firmly persuaded. He could
feel it in the air around Lucetta, see it in the turn of her pen. There
was an antagonistic force in exercise, so that when he had tried to
hang near her he seemed standing in a refluent current. That it was not
innate caprice he was more and more certain. Her windows gleamed as
if they did not want him; her curtains seem to hang slily, as if
they screened an ousting presence. To discover whose presence that
was--whether really Farfrae's after all, or another's--he exerted
himself to the utmost to see her again; and at length succeeded.

At the interview, when she offered him tea, he made it a point to launch
a cautious inquiry if she knew Mr. Farfrae.

O yes, she knew him, she declared; she could not help knowing almost
everybody in Casterbridge, living in such a gazebo over the centre and
arena of the town.

"Pleasant young fellow," said Henchard.

"Yes," said Lucetta.

"We both know him," said kind Elizabeth-Jane, to relieve her companion's
divined embarrassment.

There was a knock at the door; literally, three full knocks and a little
one at the end.

"That kind of knock means half-and-half--somebody between gentle
and simple," said the corn-merchant to himself. "I shouldn't wonder
therefore if it is he." In a few seconds surely enough Donald walked in.

Lucetta was full of little fidgets and flutters, which increased
Henchard's suspicions without affording any special proof of their
correctness. He was well-nigh ferocious at the sense of the queer
situation in which he stood towards this woman. One who had reproached
him for deserting her when calumniated, w