FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165  
166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   >>   >|  
o fill the gap for awhile, there being no pressure of half acquaintance to drive them into speech if they were not minded for it. "That's the way the wind blows, is it?" he said at last grimly, nodding an affirmative to his own thoughts. A yellow flood of reflected sunlight filled the room for a few instants. It was produced by the passing of a load of newly trussed hay from the country, in a waggon marked with Farfrae's name. Beside it rode Farfrae himself on horseback. Lucetta's face became--as a woman's face becomes when the man she loves rises upon her gaze like an apparition. A turn of the eye by Henchard, a glance from the window, and the secret of her inaccessibility would have been revealed. But Henchard in estimating her tone was looking down so plumb-straight that he did not note the warm consciousness upon Lucetta's face. "I shouldn't have thought it--I shouldn't have thought it of women!" he said emphatically by-and-by, rising and shaking himself into activity; while Lucetta was so anxious to divert him from any suspicion of the truth that she asked him to be in no hurry. Bringing him some apples she insisted upon paring one for him. He would not take it. "No, no; such is not for me," he said drily, and moved to the door. At going out he turned his eye upon her. "You came to live in Casterbridge entirely on my account," he said. "Yet now you are here you won't have anything to say to my offer!" He had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon the sofa and jumped up again in a fit of desperation. "I WILL love him!" she cried passionately; "as for HIM--he's hot-tempered and stern, and it would be madness to bind myself to him knowing that. I won't be a slave to the past--I'll love where I choose!" Yet having decided to break away from Henchard one might have supposed her capable of aiming higher than Farfrae. But Lucetta reasoned nothing: she feared hard words from the people with whom she had been earlier associated; she had no relatives left; and with native lightness of heart took kindly to what fate offered. Elizabeth-Jane, surveying the position of Lucetta between her two lovers from the crystalline sphere of a straightforward mind, did not fail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Donald Farfrae became more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Farfrae's side it was the unforced passion of youth. On Henchard's the artificially stimulated coveting o
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165  
166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   187   188   189   190   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Farfrae
 

Lucetta

 

Henchard

 
thought
 

shouldn

 

artificially

 

tempered

 

passion

 

knowing

 

madness


desperation

 
Casterbridge
 

account

 
staircase
 
dropped
 

unforced

 

passionately

 

stimulated

 

coveting

 

jumped


perceive

 

lightness

 

native

 

earlier

 

called

 
father
 

relatives

 

kindly

 

lovers

 

crystalline


sphere

 

straightforward

 
position
 

offered

 

Elizabeth

 

surveying

 

people

 

supposed

 

capable

 

aiming


choose
 
decided
 

friend

 

higher

 

feared

 
Donald
 

desperately

 
reasoned
 
enamoured
 

divert