e clouds."

"I know it, I know it. I found it out directly," said Henchard, still
with averted eyes. "There lay the sting o't to me. If she had seen it as
what it was she would never have left me. Never! But how should she be
expected to know? What advantages had she? None. She could write her own
name, and no more."

"Well, it was not in my heart to undeceive her when the deed was done,"
said the sailor of former days. "I thought, and there was not much
vanity in thinking it, that she would be happier with me. She was fairly
happy, and I never would have undeceived her till the day of her
death. Your child died; she had another, and all went well. But a time
came--mind me, a time always does come. A time came--it was some while
after she and I and the child returned from America--when somebody she
had confided her history to, told her my claim to her was a mockery, and
made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never happy
with me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she must
leave me, and then came the question of our child. Then a man advised
me how to act, and I did it, for I thought it was best. I left her
at Falmouth, and went off to sea. When I got to the other side of
the Atlantic there was a storm, and it was supposed that a lot of
us, including myself, had been washed overboard. I got ashore at
Newfoundland, and then I asked myself what I should do.

"'Since I'm here, here I'll bide,' I thought to myself; ''twill be most
kindness to her, now she's taken against me, to let her believe me lost,
for,' I thought, 'while she supposes us both alive she'll be miserable;
but if she thinks me dead she'll go back to him, and the child will have
a home.' I've never returned to this country till a month ago, and I
found that, as I supposed, she went to you, and my daughter with
her. They told me in Falmouth that Susan was dead. But my
Elizabeth-Jane--where is she?"

"Dead likewise," said Henchard doggedly. "Surely you learnt that too?"

The sailor started up, and took an enervated pace or two down the room.
"Dead!" he said, in a low voice. "Then what's the use of my money to
me?"

Henchard, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a
question for Newson himself than for him.

"Where is she buried?" the traveller inquired.

"Beside her mother," said Henchard, in the same stolid tones.

"When did she die?"

"A year ago and more," replied the other without hesitation