ho had urged claims upon his
consideration on that account, who had lived waiting for him, who at the
first decent opportunity had come to ask him to rectify, by making her
his, the false position into which she had placed herself for his sake;
such she had been. And now he sat at her tea-table eager to gain her
attention, and in his amatory rage feeling the other man present to be a
villain, just as any young fool of a lover might feel.

They sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like some Tuscan
painting of the two disciples supping at Emmaus. Lucetta, forming the
third and haloed figure, was opposite them; Elizabeth-Jane, being out
of the game, and out of the group, could observe all from afar, like
the evangelist who had to write it down: that there were long spaces of
taciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to the touch
of spoons and china, the click of a heel on the pavement under the
window, the passing of a wheelbarrow or cart, the whistling of the
carter, the gush of water into householders' buckets at the town-pump
opposite, the exchange of greetings among their neighbours, and the
rattle of the yokes by which they carried off their evening supply.

"More bread-and-butter?" said Lucetta to Henchard and Farfrae equally,
holding out between them a plateful of long slices. Henchard took a
slice by one end and Donald by the other; each feeling certain he was
the man meant; neither let go, and the slice came in two.

"Oh--I am so sorry!" cried Lucetta, with a nervous titter. Farfrae tried
to laugh; but he was too much in love to see the incident in any but a
tragic light.

"How ridiculous of all three of them!" said Elizabeth to herself.

Henchard left the house with a ton of conjecture, though without a grain
of proof, that the counterattraction was Farfrae; and therefore he
would not make up his mind. Yet to Elizabeth-Jane it was plain as the
town-pump that Donald and Lucetta were incipient lovers. More than once,
in spite of her care, Lucetta had been unable to restrain her glance
from flitting across into Farfrae's eyes like a bird to its nest. But
Henchard was constructed upon too large a scale to discern such minutiae
as these by an evening light, which to him were as the notes of an
insect that lie above the compass of the human ear.

But he was disturbed. And the sense of occult rivalry in suitorship was
so much superadded to the palpable rivalry of their business lives. To