Chapter 30

Farfrae's words to his landlady had referred to the removal
of his boxes and other effects from his late lodgings to
Lucetta's house. The work was not heavy, but it had been
much hindered on account of the frequent pauses necessitated
by exclamations of surprise at the event, of which the good
woman had been briefly informed by letter a few hours
earlier.

At the last moment of leaving Port-Bredy, Farfrae, like John
Gilpin, had been detained by important customers, whom, even
in the exceptional circumstances, he was not the man to
neglect. Moreover, there was a convenience in Lucetta
arriving first at her house. Nobody there as yet knew what
had happened; and she was best in a position to break the
news to the inmates, and give directions for her husband's
accommodation. He had, therefore, sent on his two-days'
bride in a hired brougham, whilst he went across the country
to a certain group of wheat and barley ricks a few miles
off, telling her the hour at which he might be expected the
same evening. This accounted for her trotting out to meet
him after their separation of four hours.

By a strenuous effort, after leaving Henchard she calmed
herself in readiness to receive Donald at High-Place Hall
when he came on from his lodgings. One supreme fact
empowered her to this, the sense that, come what would, she
had secured him. Half-an-hour after her arrival he walked
in, and she met him with a relieved gladness, which a
month's perilous absence could not have intensified.

"There is one thing I have not done; and yet it is
important," she said earnestly, when she had finished
talking about the adventure with the bull. "That is, broken
the news of our marriage to my dear Elizabeth-Jane."

"Ah, and you have not?" he said thoughtfully. "I gave her a
lift from the barn homewards; but I did not tell her either;
for I thought she might have heard of it in the town, and
was keeping back her congratulations from shyness, and all
that."

"She can hardly have heard of it. But I'll find out; I'll
go to her now. And, Donald, you don't mind her living on
with me just the same as before? She is so quiet and
unassuming."

"O no, indeed I don't," Farfrae answered with, perhaps, a
faint awkwardness. "But I wonder if she would care to?"

"O yes!" said Lucetta eagerly. "I am sure she would like
to. Besides, poor thing, she has no other home."

Farfrae looked at her and saw that she did not suspect the
secret of her more reserved friend. He liked her all the
better for the blindness. "Arrange as you like with her by
all means," he said. "It is I who have come to your house,
not you to mine."

"I'll run and speak to her," said Lucetta.