u did
not ask me."

"May you come to me?" he cried bitterly. "Elizabeth, don't mock me! If
you only would come!"

"I will," said she.

"How will you forgive all my roughness in former days? You cannot!"

"I have forgotten it. Talk of that no more."

Thus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at
length each went home. Then Henchard shaved for the first time during
many days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a man
resuscitated thenceforward.

The next morning the fact turned out to be as Elizabeth-Jane had stated;
the effigy was discovered by a cowherd, and that of Lucetta a little
higher up in the same stream. But as little as possible was said of the
matter, and the figures were privately destroyed.

Despite this natural solution of the mystery Henchard no less regarded
it as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there.
Elizabeth-Jane heard him say, "Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it
seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!"

42.

But the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody's hand began to die
out of Henchard's breast as time slowly removed into distance the event
which had given that feeling birth. The apparition of Newson haunted
him. He would surely return.

Yet Newson did not arrive. Lucetta had been borne along the churchyard
path; Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her,
before proceeding to its work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth
remained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Henchard, and
now shared his home. Perhaps, after all, Newson was gone for ever.

In due time the bereaved Farfrae had learnt the, at least, proximate
cause of Lucetta's illness and death, and his first impulse was
naturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the
perpetrators of the mischief. He resolved to wait till the funeral was
over ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he reflected.
Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen
or intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession.
The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the
head of affairs--that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe
under the heel of the same--had alone animated them, so far as he could
see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other considerations
were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him befo