k had coloured simply at the consciousness of sounding her name.
He now felt a strangely distressing qualm from a new thought. The
letter could of course be no other than anonymous, or the inquiry
would not have been necessary.

Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons are always ready
with their "Is it I?" in preference to objective reasoning.

"The question was perfectly fair," he returned--and there was
something incongruous in the serious earnestness with which he
applied himself to an argument on a valentine. "You know it is
always expected that privy inquiries will be made: that's where
the--fun lies." If the word "fun" had been "torture," it could not
have been uttered with a more constrained and restless countenance
than was Boldwood's then.

Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved man returned to
his house to breakfast--feeling twinges of shame and regret at having
so far exposed his mood by those fevered questions to a stranger. He
again placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to think of
the circumstances attending it by the light of Gabriel's information.

CHAPTER XVI

ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'

On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of
women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of a church
called All Saints', in the distant barrack-town before-mentioned, at
the end of a service without a sermon. They were about to disperse,
when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central
passage, arrested their attention. The step echoed with a ring
unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs. Everybody looked. A
young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a
sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment
which was only the more marked by the intense vigour of his step, and
by the determination upon his face to show none. A slight flush had
mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these
women; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till
he came close to the altar railing. Here for a moment he stood
alone.

The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice,
perceived the new-comer, and followed him to the communion-space. He
whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his
turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they
also went up the chancel steps.

"'Tis a wedding!" murm