and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that
a union between his cherished step-daughter and the energetic thriving
Donald was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the
very possibility.

Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape
in action. But he was not now the Henchard of former days. He schooled
himself to accept her will, in this as in other matters, as absolute and
unquestionable. He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose for him
such regard as he had regained from her by his devotion, feeling that
to retain this under separation was better than to incur her dislike by
keeping her near.

But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in
the evening he said, with the stillness of suspense: "Have you seen Mr.
Farfrae to-day, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth-Jane started at the question; and it was with some confusion
that she replied "No."

"Oh--that's right--that's right....It was only that I saw him in the
street when we both were there." He was wondering if her embarrassment
justified him in a new suspicion--that the long walks which she had
latterly been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him, had
anything to do with the young man. She did not enlighten him, and lest
silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavourable to their present
friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another channel.

Henchard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good
or for evil. But the solicitus timor of his love--the dependence upon
Elizabeth's regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense,
to which he had advanced)--denaturalized him. He would often weigh
and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or
phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been
his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for
Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with
himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly.

There was nothing secret in Elizabeth-Jane's movements beyond what
habitual reserve induced, and it may at once be owned on her account
that she was guilty of occasional conversations with Donald when they
chanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her walks on the Budmouth
Road, her return from those walks was often coincident with Farfrae's
emergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes' blow on that ra