Farfrae should at all events have
no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when he took his
journey homeward later on.

Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae's house to make
inquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his
from the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous
disappointment, "O--it is not he!" The manservant, finding his mistake,
had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Henchard.

"But haven't you found him?" said the doctor.

"Yes....I cannot tell 'ee!" Henchard replied as he sank down on a chair
within the entrance. "He can't be home for two hours."

"H'm," said the surgeon, returning upstairs.

"How is she?" asked Henchard of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.

"In great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her
fearfully restless. Poor woman--I fear they have killed her!"

Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she
struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of
the door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man's rivalry,
he thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the
shells. But about Elizabeth-lane; in the midst of his gloom she seemed
to him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as she
answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and above
all things what he desired now was affection from anything that was good
and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint
dream that he might get to like her as his own,--if she would only
continue to love him.

Jopp was just going to bed when Henchard got home. As the latter entered
the door Jopp said, "This is rather bad about Mrs. Farfrae's illness."

"Yes," said Henchard shortly, though little dreaming of Jopp's
complicity in the night's harlequinade, and raising his eyes just
sufficiently to observe that Jopp's face was lined with anxiety.

"Somebody has called for you," continued Jopp, when Henchard was
shutting himself into his own apartment. "A kind of traveller, or
sea-captain of some sort."

"Oh?--who could he be?"

"He seemed a well-be-doing man--had grey hair and a broadish face; but
he gave no name, and no message."

"Nor do I gi'e him any attention." And, saying this, Henchard closed his
door.

The divergence to Mellstock delayed Farfrae's return very nearly the
two hours of Henchard's estima