w should he, there and then, set
before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults--that he
had himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by
her mother's letter that his own child had died; that, in the second
accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester
who loved her affection better than his own honour? Among the many
hindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did not
sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal
or elaborate argument.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only his
discomposure. "Don't ye distress yourself on my account," he said, with
proud superiority. "I would not wish it--at such a time, too, as this.
I have done wrong in coming to 'ee--I see my error. But it is only for
once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble 'ee again, Elizabeth-Jane--no,
not to my dying day! Good-night. Good-bye!"

Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Henchard went out from her
rooms, and departed from the house by the back way as he had come; and
she saw him no more.

45.

It was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter.
Elizabeth-Jane had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation, and
the only difference between Donald's movements now and formerly was that
he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than he had
been in the habit of doing for some time.

Newson had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party
(whose gaiety, as might have been surmised, was of his making rather
than of the married couple's), and was stared at and honoured as became
the returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because Casterbridge
was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and disappearances through
having been for centuries an assize town, in which sensational exits
from the world, antipodean absences, and such like, were half-yearly
occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether lose their equanimity
on his account. On the fourth morning he was discovered disconsolately
climbing a hill, in his craving to get a glimpse of the sea from
somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt water proved to be such a
necessity of his existence that he preferred Budmouth as a place of
residence, notwithstanding the society of his daughter in the other
town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in a green-shuttered
cottage which had a bow-wind