Chapter 26 - Page 2

"Yes," said Lucetta.

"We both know him," said kind Elizabeth-Jane, to relieve her
companion's divined embarrassment.

There was a knock at the door; literally, three full knocks
and a little one at the end.

"That kind of knock means half-and-half--somebody between
gentle and simple," said the corn-merchant to himself. "I
shouldn't wonder therefore if it is he." In a few seconds
surely enough Donald walked in.

Lucetta was full of little fidgets and flutters, which
increased Henchard's suspicions without affording any
special proof of their correctness. He was well-nigh
ferocious at the sense of the queer situation in which he
stood towards this woman. One who had reproached him for
deserting her when calumniated, who had urged claims upon
his consideration on that account, who had lived waiting for
him, who at the first decent opportunity had come to ask him
to rectify, by making her his, the false position into which
she had placed herself for his sake; such she had been. And
now he sat at her tea-table eager to gain her attention, and
in his amatory rage feeling the other man present to be a
villain, just as any young fool of a lover might feel.

They sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like
some Tuscan painting of the two disciples supping at Emmaus.
Lucetta, forming the third and haloed figure, was opposite
them; Elizabeth-Jane, being out of the game, and out of the
group, could observe all from afar, like the evangelist who
had to write it down: that there were long spaces of
taciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to
the touch of spoons and china, the click of a heel on the
pavement under the window, the passing of a wheelbarrow or
cart, the whistling of the carter, the gush of water into
householders' buckets at the town-pump opposite, the
exchange of greetings among their neighbours, and the rattle
of the yokes by which they carried off their evening supply.

"More bread-and-butter?" said Lucetta to Henchard and
Farfrae equally, holding out between them a plateful of long
slices. Henchard took a slice by one end and Donald by the
other; each feeling certain he was the man meant; neither
let go, and the slice came in two.

"Oh--I am so sorry!" cried Lucetta, with a nervous titter.
Farfrae tried to laugh; but he was too much in love to see
the incident in any but a tragic light.

"How ridiculous of all three of them!" said Elizabeth to
herself.

Henchard left the house with a ton of conjecture, though
without a grain of proof, that the counterattraction was
Farfrae; and therefore he would not make up his mind. Yet
to Elizabeth-Jane it was plain as the town-pump that Donald