ses. If you must have it, take it."

"Very good. Thank you. I expect I shall have gone away before you
are in to breakfast to-morrow."

"And must you go? Ah! there was a time, Frank, when it would have
taken a good many promises to other people to drag you away from me.
You used to call me darling, then. But it doesn't matter to you how
my days are passed now."

"I must go, in spite of sentiment." Troy, as he spoke, looked at his
watch, and, apparently actuated by _non lucendo_ principles, opened
the case at the back, revealing, snugly stowed within it, a small
coil of hair.

Bathsheba's eyes had been accidentally lifted at that moment, and she
saw the action and saw the hair. She flushed in pain and surprise,
and some words escaped her before she had thought whether or not it
was wise to utter them. "A woman's curl of hair!" she said. "Oh,
Frank, whose is that?"

Troy had instantly closed his watch. He carelessly replied, as one
who cloaked some feelings that the sight had stirred. "Why, yours,
of course. Whose should it be? I had quite forgotten that I had
it."

"What a dreadful fib, Frank!"

"I tell you I had forgotten it!" he said, loudly.

"I don't mean that--it was yellow hair."

"Nonsense."

"That's insulting me. I know it was yellow. Now whose was it? I
want to know."

"Very well--I'll tell you, so make no more ado. It is the hair of a
young woman I was going to marry before I knew you."

"You ought to tell me her name, then."

"I cannot do that."

"Is she married yet?"

"No."

"Is she alive?"

"Yes."

"Is she pretty?"

"Yes."

"It is wonderful how she can be, poor thing, under such an awful
affliction!"

"Affliction--what affliction?" he inquired, quickly.

"Having hair of that dreadful colour."

"Oh--ho--I like that!" said Troy, recovering himself. "Why, her hair
has been admired by everybody who has seen her since she has worn it
loose, which has not been long. It is beautiful hair. People used
to turn their heads to look at it, poor girl!"

"Pooh! that's nothing--that's nothing!" she exclaimed, in incipient
accents of pique. "If I cared for your love as much as I used to I
could say people had turned to look at mine."

"Bathsheba, don't be so fitful and jealous. You knew what married
life would be like, and shouldn't have entered it if you feared these
contingencies."

Troy had by this time driven her to bitterness: her heart was big in
her throat