ipient jealousy; he trod for the
first time the threshold of "the injured lover's hell." His first
impulse was to go and thrust himself between them. This could be
done, but only in one way--by asking to see a sample of her corn.
Boldwood renounced the idea. He could not make the request; it was
debasing loveliness to ask it to buy and sell, and jarred with his
conceptions of her.

All this time Bathsheba was conscious of having broken into that
dignified stronghold at last. His eyes, she knew, were following her
everywhere. This was a triumph; and had it come naturally, such a
triumph would have been the sweeter to her for this piquing delay.
But it had been brought about by misdirected ingenuity, and she
valued it only as she valued an artificial flower or a wax fruit.

Being a woman with some good sense in reasoning on subjects wherein
her heart was not involved, Bathsheba genuinely repented that a freak
which had owed its existence as much to Liddy as to herself, should
ever have been undertaken, to disturb the placidity of a man she
respected too highly to deliberately tease.

She that day nearly formed the intention of begging his pardon on
the very next occasion of their meeting. The worst features of this
arrangement were that, if he thought she ridiculed him, an apology
would increase the offence by being disbelieved; and if he thought
she wanted him to woo her, it would read like additional evidence of
her forwardness.

CHAPTER XVIII

BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION--REGRET

Boldwood was tenant of what was called Little Weatherbury Farm, and
his person was the nearest approach to aristocracy that this remoter
quarter of the parish could boast of. Genteel strangers, whose god
was their town, who might happen to be compelled to linger about this
nook for a day, heard the sound of light wheels, and prayed to see
good society, to the degree of a solitary lord, or squire at the very
least, but it was only Mr. Boldwood going out for the day. They
heard the sound of wheels yet once more, and were re-animated to
expectancy: it was only Mr. Boldwood coming home again.

His house stood recessed from the road, and the stables, which are
to a farm what a fireplace is to a room, were behind, their lower
portions being lost amid bushes of laurel. Inside the blue door,
open half-way down, were to be seen at this time the backs and tails
of half-a-dozen warm and contented horses standing in their stalls;
a