ply--

"Mrs. Troy, you will marry again some day?"

This point-blank query unmistakably confused her, and it was not till
a minute or more had elapsed that she said, "I have not seriously
thought of any such subject."

"I quite understand that. Yet your late husband has been dead nearly
one year, and--"

"You forget that his death was never absolutely proved, and may not
have taken place; so that I may not be really a widow," she said,
catching at the straw of escape that the fact afforded.

"Not absolutely proved, perhaps, but it was proved circumstantially.
A man saw him drowning, too. No reasonable person has any doubt of
his death; nor have you, ma'am, I should imagine."

"I have none now, or I should have acted differently," she said,
gently. "I certainly, at first, had a strange unaccountable feeling
that he could not have perished, but I have been able to explain that
in several ways since. But though I am fully persuaded that I shall
see him no more, I am far from thinking of marriage with another. I
should be very contemptible to indulge in such a thought."

They were silent now awhile, and having struck into an unfrequented
track across a common, the creaks of Boldwood's saddle and her gig
springs were all the sounds to be heard. Boldwood ended the pause.

"Do you remember when I carried you fainting in my arms into the
King's Arms, in Casterbridge? Every dog has his day: that was mine."

"I know--I know it all," she said, hurriedly.

"I, for one, shall never cease regretting that events so fell out as
to deny you to me."

"I, too, am very sorry," she said, and then checked herself. "I
mean, you know, I am sorry you thought I--"

"I have always this dreary pleasure in thinking over those past times
with you--that I was something to you before HE was anything, and
that you belonged ALMOST to me. But, of course, that's nothing. You
never liked me."

"I did; and respected you, too."

"Do you now?"

"Yes."

"Which?"

"How do you mean which?"

"Do you like me, or do you respect me?"

"I don't know--at least, I cannot tell you. It is difficult for a
woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men
to express theirs. My treatment of you was thoughtless, inexcusable,
wicked! I shall eternally regret it. If there had been anything
I could have done to make amends I would most gladly have done
it--there was nothing on earth I so longed to do as to repair the
e