aking French does not go
for much. It is rather the other way."

"Where is your native isle?"

It was with rather more reluctance that Miss Templeman said, "Jersey.
There they speak French on one side of the street and English on the
other, and a mixed tongue in the middle of the road. But it is a long
time since I was there. Bath is where my people really belong to, though
my ancestors in Jersey were as good as anybody in England. They were
the Le Sueurs, an old family who have done great things in their time.
I went back and lived there after my father's death. But I don't value
such past matters, and am quite an English person in my feelings and
tastes."

Lucetta's tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion. She had arrived
at Casterbridge as a Bath lady, and there were obvious reasons why
Jersey should drop out of her life. But Elizabeth had tempted her to
make free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken.

It could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Lucetta's
words went no further, and after this day she was so much upon her
guard that there appeared no chance of her identification with the young
Jersey woman who had been Henchard's dear comrade at a critical time.
Not the least amusing of her safeguards was her resolute avoidance of a
French word if one by accident came to her tongue more readily than
its English equivalent. She shirked it with the suddenness of the weak
Apostle at the accusation, "Thy speech bewrayeth thee!"

Expectancy sat visibly upon Lucetta the next morning. She dressed
herself for Mr. Henchard, and restlessly awaited his call before
mid-day; as he did not come she waited on through the afternoon. But
she did not tell Elizabeth that the person expected was the girl's
stepfather.

They sat in adjoining windows of the same room in Lucetta's great stone
mansion, netting, and looking out upon the market, which formed an
animated scene. Elizabeth could see the crown of her stepfather's hat
among the rest beneath, and was not aware that Lucetta watched the same
object with yet intenser interest. He moved about amid the throng, at
this point lively as an ant-hill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken
up by stalls of fruit and vegetables.

The farmers as a rule preferred the open carrefour for their
transactions, despite its inconvenient jostlings and the danger from
crossing vehicles, to the gloomy sheltered market-room provided for
them. Here they surged on this