Chapter 25

The next phase of the supersession of Henchard in Lucetta's
heart was an experiment in calling on her performed by
Farfrae with some apparent trepidation. Conventionally
speaking he conversed with both Miss Templeman and her
companion; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth sat
invisible in the room. Donald appeared not to see her at
all, and answered her wise little remarks with curtly
indifferent monosyllables, his looks and faculties hanging
on the woman who could boast of a more Protean variety in
her phases, moods, opinions, and also principles, than could
Elizabeth. Lucetta had persisted in dragging her into the
circle; but she had remained like an awkward third point
which that circle would not touch.

Susan Henchard's daughter bore up against the frosty ache of
the treatment, as she had borne up under worse things, and
contrived as soon as possible to get out of the inharmonious
room without being missed. The Scotchman seemed hardly the
same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in
a delicate poise between love and friendship--that period in
the history of a love when alone it can be said to be
unalloyed with pain.

She stoically looked from her bedroom window, and
contemplated her fate as if it were written on the top of
the church-tower hard by. "Yes," she said at last, bringing
down her palm upon the sill with a pat: "HE is the
second man of that story she told me!"

All this time Henchard's smouldering sentiments towards
Lucetta had been fanned into higher and higher inflammation
by the circumstances of the case. He was discovering that
the young woman for whom he once felt a pitying warmth which
had been almost chilled out of him by reflection, was, when
now qualified with a slight inaccessibility and a more
matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with
life. Day after day proved to him, by her silence, that it
was no use to think of bringing her round by holding aloof;
so he gave in, and called upon her again, Elizabeth-Jane
being absent.

He crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some
awkwardness, his strong, warm gaze upon her--like the sun
beside the moon in comparison with Farfrae's modest look--
and with something of a hail-fellow bearing, as, indeed, was
not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by her
change of position, and held out her hand to him in such
cool friendship, that he became deferential, and sat down
with a perceptible loss of power. He understood but little
of fashion in dress, yet enough to feel himself inadequate
in appearance beside her whom he had hitherto been dreaming
of as almost his property. She said something very polite
about his being good enough to call.