nce of Mr. Farfrae's?" observed Mrs.
Bath, the physician's wife, a new-comer to the town through her recent
marriage with the doctor.

"He works for my husband," said Lucetta.

"Oh--is that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him
your husband first got a footing in Casterbridge. What stories people
will tell!"

"They will indeed. It was not so at all. Donald's genius would have
enabled him to get a footing anywhere, without anybody's help! He would
have been just the same if there had been no Henchard in the world!"

It was partly Lucetta's ignorance of the circumstances of Donald's
arrival which led her to speak thus, partly the sensation that everybody
seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The incident had
occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily witnessed by the
Royal Personage, who, however, with practised tact affected not to have
noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor advanced, the address
was read; the Illustrious Personage replied, then said a few words to
Farfrae, and shook hands with Lucetta as the Mayor's wife. The ceremony
occupied but a few minutes, and the carriages rattled heavily as
Pharaoh's chariots down Corn Street and out upon the Budmouth Road, in
continuation of the journey coastward.

In the crowd stood Coney, Buzzford, and Longways "Some difference
between him now and when he zung at the Dree Mariners," said the first.
"'Tis wonderful how he could get a lady of her quality to go snacks wi'
en in such quick time."

"True. Yet how folk do worship fine clothes! Now there's a
better-looking woman than she that nobody notices at all, because she's
akin to that hontish fellow Henchard."

"I could worship ye, Buzz, for saying that," remarked Nance Mockridge.
"I do like to see the trimming pulled off such Christmas candles. I am
quite unequal to the part of villain myself, or I'd gi'e all my small
silver to see that lady toppered....And perhaps I shall soon," she added
significantly.

"That's not a noble passiont for a 'oman to keep up," said Longways.

Nance did not reply, but every one knew what she meant. The ideas
diffused by the reading of Lucetta's letters at Peter's Finger had
condensed into a scandal, which was spreading like a miasmatic fog
through Mixen Lane, and thence up the back streets of Casterbridge.

The mixed assemblage of idlers known to each other presently fell apart
into two bands by a process of natural selection, the