etaliate
upon her for the trouble and delay she had put him to in winning her.
With increasing frequency he would tell her that, as far as he could
perceive, she was an article not worth such labour as he had bestowed in
obtaining it, and such snubbings as he had taken from his rivals on the
same account. These and other cruel things he repeated till he made the
lady weep sorely, and wellnigh broke her spirit, though she had formerly
been such a mettlesome dame. By degrees it became perceptible to all her
friends that her life was a very unhappy one; and the fate of the fair
woman seemed yet the harder in that it was her own stately mansion, left
to her sole use by her first husband, which her second had entered into
and was enjoying, his being but a mean and meagre erection.

But such is the flippancy of friends that when she met them, and secretly
confided her grief to their ears, they would say cheerily, 'Lord, never
mind, my dear; there's a third to come yet!'--at which maladroit remark
she would show much indignation, and tell them they should know better
than to trifle on so solemn a theme. Yet that the poor lady would have
been only too happy to be the wife of the third, instead of Sir John whom
she had taken, was painfully obvious, and much she was blamed for her
foolish choice by some people. Sir William, however, had returned to
foreign cities on learning the news of her marriage, and had never been
heard of since.

Two or three years of suffering were passed by Lady Penelope as the
despised and chidden wife of this man Sir John, amid regrets that she had
so greatly mistaken him, and sighs for one whom she thought never to see
again, till it chanced that her husband fell sick of some slight ailment.
One day after this, when she was sitting in his room, looking from the
window upon the expanse in front, she beheld, approaching the house on
foot, a form she seemed to know well. Lady Penelope withdrew silently
from the sickroom, and descended to the hall, whence, through the
doorway, she saw entering between the two round towers, which at that
time flanked the gateway, Sir William Hervy, as she had surmised, but
looking thin and travel-worn. She advanced into the courtyard to meet
him.

'I was passing through Casterbridge,' he said, with faltering deference,
'and I walked out to ask after your ladyship's health. I felt that I
could do no less; and, of course, to pay my respects to your good
husband, my