Chapter 21 - Page 2

an opposite archway merely to think that the
charming lady was inside the confronting walls, and to
wonder what she was doing. Her admiration for the
architecture of that front was entirely on account of the
inmate it screened. Though for that matter the architecture
deserved admiration, or at least study, on its own account.
It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since
the Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But
its reasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but
rich enough. A timely consciousness of the ultimate vanity
of human architecture, no less than of other human things,
had prevented artistic superfluity.

Men had still quite recently been going in and out with
parcels and packing-cases, rendering the door and hall
within like a public thoroughfare. Elizabeth trotted
through the open door in the dusk, but becoming alarmed at
her own temerity she went quickly out again by another which
stood open in the lofty wall of the back court. To her
surprise she found herself in one of the little-used alleys
of the town. Looking round at the door which had given her
egress, by the light of the solitary lamp fixed in the
alley, she saw that it was arched and old--older even than
the house itself. The door was studded, and the keystone of
the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had exhibited a
comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of
Casterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at
its open mouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the
lips and jaws as if they had been eaten away by disease.
The appearance was so ghastly by the weakly lamp-glimmer
that she could not bear to look at it--the first unpleasant
feature of her visit.

The position of the queer old door and the odd presence of
the leering mask suggested one thing above all others as
appertaining to the mansion's past history--intrigue. By
the alley it had been possible to come unseen from all sorts
of quarters in the town--the old play-house, the old bull-
stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless infants
had been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of
its conveniences undoubtedly.

She turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward,
which was down the alley, but hearing footsteps approaching
in that quarter, and having no great wish to be found in
such a place at such a time she quickly retreated. There
being no other way out she stood behind a brick pier till
the intruder should have gone his ways.

Had she watched she would have been surprised. She would
have seen that the pedestrian on coming up made straight for
the arched doorway: that as he paused with his hand upon the
latch the