“Poor fool!” said Henchard with fond savagery, holding out the note.  “To know no better than commit herself in writing like this!  Why, if I were to show that to her dear husband—­pooh!” He threw the letter into the fire.

Lucetta took care not to come again among the hay and corn.  She would rather have died than run the risk of encountering Henchard at such close quarters a second time.  The gulf between them was growing wider every day.  Farfrae was always considerate to his fallen acquaintance; but it was impossible that he should not, by degrees, cease to regard the ex-corn-merchant as more than one of his other workmen.  Henchard saw this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity, fortifying his heart by drinking more freely at the Three Mariners every evening.

Often did Elizabeth-Jane, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other liquor, carry tea to him in a little basket at five o’clock.  Arriving one day on this errand she found her stepfather was measuring up clover-seed and rape-seed in the corn-stores on the top floor, and she ascended to him.  Each floor had a door opening into the air under a cat-head, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.

When Elizabeth’s head rose through the trap she perceived that the upper door was open, and that her stepfather and Farfrae stood just within it in conversation, Farfrae being nearest the dizzy edge, and Henchard a little way behind.  Not to interrupt them she remained on the steps without raising her head any higher.  While waiting thus she saw—­or fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certain—­her stepfather slowly raise his hand to a level behind Farfrae’s shoulders, a curious expression taking possession of his face.  The young man was quite unconscious of the action, which was so indirect that, if Farfrae had observed it, he might almost have regarded it as an idle outstretching of the arm.  But it would have been possible, by a comparatively light touch, to push Farfrae off his balance, and send him head over heels into the air.

Elizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this might have meant.  As soon as they turned she mechanically took the tea to Henchard, left it, and went away.  Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure herself that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more.  Yet, on the other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where he once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison; and she finally resolved to caution Donald.

34.

Next morning, accordingly, she rose at five o’clock and went into the street.  It was not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was as silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues which framed in the borough there came a chorus of tiny rappings, caused by the fall of water-drops condensed on the boughs; now it was wafted from the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both quarters simultaneously.  She moved on to the bottom of corn Street, and, knowing his time well, waited only a few minutes before she heard the familiar bang of his door, and then his quick walk towards her.  She met him at the point where the last tree of the engirding avenue flanked the last house in the street.