heba
inquired, the next time that Liddy entered the room.

"I think 'twas because two men came just then from Casterbridge and
began putting up a grand carved tombstone," said Liddy. "The lads
went to see whose it was."

"Do you know?" Bathsheba asked.

"I don't," said Liddy.

CHAPTER XLV

TROY'S ROMANTICISM

When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his
first act was to cover the dead from sight. This done he ascended
the stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was,
he waited miserably for the morning.

Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty
hours. His day had been spent in a way which varied very materially
from his intentions regarding it. There is always an inertia to
be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct--not more in
ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as
if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

Twenty pounds having been secured from Bathsheba, he had managed to
add to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account,
which had been seven pounds ten. With this money, twenty-seven
pounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning
to keep his appointment with Fanny Robin.

On reaching Casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and
at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end
of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. The clocks struck
the hour, and no Fanny appeared. In fact, at that moment she was
being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union
poorhouse--the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had
ever been honoured with. The quarter went, the half hour. A rush of
recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time
she had broken a serious engagement with him. In anger he vowed
it should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered
and watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon
their face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they
oppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his
gig, and in a bitter mood of indifference concerning the past, and
recklessness about the future, drove on to Budmouth races.

He reached the race-course at two o'clock, and remained either there
or in the town till nine. But Fanny's image, as it had appeared to
him in the sombre shadows of that Saturday evenin