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Updated: June 26, 2025
'Twas brought here by one of our machinists on the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow who thinks " His eye caught Elizabeth-Jane's imploring face, and he stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing. He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers.
By degrees Henchard became aware that the measure was trod by some one who out-Farfraed Farfrae in saltatory intenseness. This was strange, and it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was Elizabeth-Jane's partner. The first time that Henchard saw him he was sweeping grandly round, his head quivering and low down, his legs in the form of an X and his back towards the door.
Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day. "These cursed women there's not an inch of straight grain in 'em!" he said. Let us follow the train of Mr. Henchard's thought as if it were a clue line, and view the interior of High-Place Hall on this particular evening. On Elizabeth-Jane's arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an elderly woman to go upstairs and take off her things.
"I am glad you have been able to sleep," he said, taking her hand with anxious proprietorship an act which gave her a pleasant surprise. They sat down to breakfast, and Elizabeth-Jane's thoughts reverted to Lucetta. Their sadness added charm to a countenance whose beauty had ever lain in its meditative soberness.
Near her was a barn the single building of any kind within her horizon. She strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared thereon not so much as a speck. She sighed one word "Donald!" and turned her face to the town for retreat. Here the case was different. A single figure was approaching her Elizabeth-Jane's. Lucetta, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed.
She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never to paraphrase a recent poet never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid guarantees for the same.
He called as much on Farfrae's account as on Lucetta's, and on Elizabeth-Jane's even more than on either's. Shorn one by one of all other interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of the stepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see her on each occasion of his inquiry at Lucetta's was a comfort to him.
After this she grew cool and laughed at herself, walked about the room, and laughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully rather. It was quickly known in Casterbridge that Farfrae and Henchard had decided to dispense with each other. Elizabeth-Jane's anxiety to know if Farfrae were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed her, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause.
Applying his telescope to his eye Henchard expected that Farfrae's features would be disclosed as usual. But the lenses revealed that today the man was not Elizabeth-Jane's lover. It was one clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the scrutiny of the road he revealed his face. Henchard lived a lifetime the moment he saw it. The face was Newson's.
Among the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife's little desk, the keys of which had been handed to him at her request. Here was the letter addressed to him with the restriction, "NOT TO BE OPENED TILL ELIZABETH-JANE'S WEDDING-DAY." Mrs. Henchard, though more patient than her husband, had been no practical hand at anything.
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