" said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. "And what may it be?
It's very kind of ye, I'm sure."

She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect
of possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced
Henchard's name. "I sometimes fear," she said with an effort, "that he
may be betrayed into some attempt to--insult you, sir.

"But we are the best of friends?"

"Or to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has been
hardly used."

"But we are quite friendly?"

"Or to do something--that would injure you--hurt you--wound you." Every
word cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Farfrae
was still incredulous. Henchard, a poor man in his employ, was not to
Farfrae's view the Henchard who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the
same man, but that man with his sinister qualities, formerly latent,
quickened into life by his buffetings.

Farfrae, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her
fears. Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in
the street, waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to
be repaired, farm-horses going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of
labour showing themselves generally on the move. Elizabeth entered her
lodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only made herself
appear foolish by her weak note of warning.

But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never
absolutely lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view,
and the impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his permanent
one. The vision of Elizabeth's earnest face in the rimy dawn came
back to him several times during the day. Knowing the solidity of her
character he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds.

But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Henchard's account that
engaged him just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk,
later in the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.

"About that little seedsman's shop," he said, "the shop overlooking the
churchyard, which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for our
unlucky fellow-townsman Henchard. It would be a new beginning for him,
if a small one; and I have told the Council that I would head a private
subscription among them to set him up in it--that I would be fifty
pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them."

"Yes, yes; so I've heard; a