e year had advanced into another spring,
he paused opposite her empty bedroom in passing it. He thought of the
time when she had cleared out of his then large and handsome house in
Corn Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and he had
looked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much
humbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying
everywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that
supported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must
have been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy
in reason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so
extensively in proportion to the narrowness of their income. For the
first time he felt a little hurt by what he thought her extravagance,
and resolved to say a word to her about it. But, before he had found
the courage to speak an event happened which set his thoughts flying in
quite another direction.

The busy time of the seed trade was over, and the quiet weeks that
preceded the hay-season had come--setting their special stamp upon
Casterbridge by thronging the market with wood rakes, new waggons in
yellow, green, and red, formidable scythes, and pitchforks of prong
sufficient to skewer up a small family. Henchard, contrary to his wont,
went out one Saturday afternoon towards the market-place from a curious
feeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his
former triumphs. Farfrae, to whom he was still a comparative stranger,
stood a few steps below the Corn Exchange door--a usual position with
him at this hour--and he appeared lost in thought about something he was
looking at a little way off.

Henchard's eyes followed Farfrae's, and he saw that the object of his
gaze was no sample-showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had
just come out of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite
unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those
young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno's bird, are set with
Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken.

Henchard went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant
after all in Farfrae's look at Elizabeth-Jane at that juncture. Yet he
could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest
in her, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface
that idiosyncrasy of Henchard's which had ruled his courses from the
beginning