posed
theft of the brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she
loved both by nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject,
only treated Norah with the most tender respect, as if to make up for
unjust suspicion.

Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr Openshaw had been absent
during his uncle and aunt's visit, after he had once said that it was
unavoidable. He came back grave and quiet; and from that time forth
was curiously changed. More thoughtful, and perhaps less active;
quite as decided in conduct, but with new and different rules for the
guidance of that conduct. Towards Alice he could hardly be more kind
than he had always been; but he now seemed to look upon her as someone
sacred, and to be treated with reverence, as well as tenderness. He
throve in business, and made a large fortune, one half of which was
settled upon her.

Long years after these events--a few months after her mother
died--Ailsie and her 'father' (as she always called Mr Openshaw)
drove to a cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to
a certain mound by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage.
There was a headstone, with F.W. and a date upon it. That was all.
Sitting by the grave, Mr Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad
fate of that poor father whom she had never seen, he shed the only
tears she ever saw fall from his eyes.

_Thomas Hardy_

A MERE INTERLUDE

(_The Bolton Weekly Journal_, 17 and 24 October 1885)

I

The traveller in school-books, who vouched in dryest tones for the
fidelity to fact of the following narrative, used to add a ring of
truth to it by opening with a nicety of criticism on the heroine's
personality. People were wrong, he declared, when they surmised
that Baptista Trewthen was a young woman with scarcely emotions or
character. There was nothing in her to love, and nothing to hate--so
ran the general opinion. That she showed few positive qualities was
true. The colours and tones which changing events paint on the faces
of active womankind were looked for in vain upon hers. But still
waters run deep; and no crisis had come in the years of her early
maidenhood to demonstrate what lay hidden within her, like metal in a
mine.

She was the daughter of a small farmer in St Maria's, one of the Isles
of Lyonesse beyond Off-Wessex, who had spent a large sum, as there
understood, on her education, by sending her to the mainland for
two years. At nineteen