r and thinner than it
had been; even more attractive, her disappointments having inscribed
themselves as meek thoughtfulness on a look that was once a little
frivolous. The two ladies had called to be allowed to use the window for
observing the departure of the Hussars, who were leaving for barracks
much nearer to London.

The troopers turned the corner of Barrack Road into the top of High
Street, headed by their band playing 'The girl I left behind me' (which
was formerly always the tune for such times, though it is now nearly
disused). They came and passed the oriel, where an officer or two,
looking up and discovering Mrs. Maumbry, saluted her, whose eyes filled
with tears as the notes of the band waned away. Before the little group
had recovered from that sense of the romantic which such spectacles
impart, Mr. Maumbry came along the pavement. He probably had bidden his
former brethren-in-arms a farewell at the top of the street, for he
walked from that direction in his rather shabby clerical clothes, and
with a basket on his arm which seemed to hold some purchases he had been
making for his poorer parishioners. Unlike the soldiers he went along
quite unconscious of his appearance or of the scene around.

The contrast was too much for Laura. With lips that now quivered, she
asked the invalid what he thought of the change that had come to her.

It was difficult to answer, and with a wilfulness that was too strong in
her she repeated the question.

'Do you think,' she added, 'that a woman's husband has a right to do such
a thing, even if he does feel a certain call to it?'

Her listener sympathized too largely with both of them to be anything but
unsatisfactory in his reply. Laura gazed longingly out of the window
towards the thin dusty line of Hussars, now smalling towards the
Mellstock Ridge. 'I,' she said, 'who should have been in their van on
the way to London, am doomed to fester in a hole in Durnover Lane!'

Many events had passed and many rumours had been current concerning her
before the invalid saw her again after her leave-taking that day.

CHAPTER V

Casterbridge had known many military and civil episodes; many happy
times, and times less happy; and now came the time of her visitation. The
scourge of cholera had been laid on the suffering country, and the low-
lying purlieus of this ancient borough had more than their share of the
infliction. Mixen Lane, in the Durnover quarter, and in