Elizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in the idea, thinking a change would afford her relief.  She could not help suspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge in Lucetta’s eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Farfrae was away from home.

Elizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of High-Place Hall till her return.  After two or three days of solitude and incessant rain Henchard called at the house.  He seemed disappointed to hear of Lucetta’s absence and though he nodded with outward indifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien.

The next day he called again.  “Is she come now?” he asked.

“Yes.  She returned this morning,” replied his stepdaughter.  “But she is not indoors.  She has gone for a walk along the turnpike-road to Port-Bredy.  She will be home by dusk.”

After a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience, he left the house again.

29.

At this hour Lucetta was bounding along the road to Port-Bredy just as Elizabeth had announced.  That she had chosen for her afternoon walk the road along which she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier in a carriage was curious—­if anything should be called curious in concatenations of phenomena wherein each is known to have its accounting cause.  It was the day of the chief market—­Saturday—­and Farfrae for once had been missed from his corn-stand in the dealers’ room.  Nevertheless, it was known that he would be home that night—­“for Sunday,” as Casterbridge expressed it.

Lucetta, in continuing her walk, had at length reached the end of the ranked trees which bordered the highway in this and other directions out of the town.  This end marked a mile; and here she stopped.

The spot was a vale between two gentle acclivities, and the road, still adhering to its Roman foundation, stretched onward straight as a surveyor’s line till lost to sight on the most distant ridge.  There was neither hedge nor tree in the prospect now, the road clinging to the stubby expanse of corn-land like a strip to an undulating garment.  Near her was a barn—­the single building of any kind within her horizon.

She strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared thereon—­not so much as a speck.  She sighed one word—­“Donald!” and turned her face to the town for retreat.

Here the case was different.  A single figure was approaching her—­Elizabeth-Jane’s.

Lucetta, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed.  Elizabeth’s face, as soon as she recognized her friend, shaped itself into affectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance.  “I suddenly thought I would come and meet you,” she said, smiling.

Lucetta’s reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion.  A by-road on her right hand descended from the fields into the highway at the point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling uncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did not observe him.