experience of Lucetta--all that it was, and all that it was not. There
are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or
cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has
pronounced it no rarity--even the reverse, indeed, and without them the
band of the worthy is incomplete. But Farfrae was not of those. It
was inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature
should take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw about him. He
could not but perceive that by the death of Lucetta he had exchanged
a looming misery for a simple sorrow. After that revelation of her
history, which must have come sooner or later in any circumstances, it
was hard to believe that life with her would have been productive of
further happiness.

But as a memory, nothwithstanding such conditions, Lucetta's image still
lived on with him, her weaknesses provoking only the gentlest criticism,
and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to a momentary
spark now and then.

By the end of a year Henchard's little retail seed and grain shop, not
much larger than a cupboard, had developed its trade considerably, and
the stepfather and daughter enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant, sunny
corner in which it stood. The quiet bearing of one who brimmed with an
inner activity characterized Elizabeth-Jane at this period. She took
long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in the
direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she sat
with him in the evening after those invigorating walks she was civil
rather than affectionate; and he was troubled; one more bitter regret
being added to those he had already experienced at having, by his severe
censorship, frozen up her precious affection when originally offered.

She had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying
and selling, her word was law.

"You have got a new muff, Elizabeth," he said to her one day quite
humbly.

"Yes; I bought it," she said.

He looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a
glossy brown, and, though he was no judge of such articles, he thought
it seemed an unusually good one for her to possess.

"Rather costly, I suppose, my dear, was it not?" he hazarded.

"It was rather above my figure," she said quietly. "But it is not
showy."

"O no," said the netted lion, anxious not to pique her in the least.

Some little time after, when th