For poor Lucetta they took no protective measure, believing with the majority there was some truth in the scandal, which she would have to bear as she best might.

It was about eight o’clock, and Lucetta was sitting in the drawing-room alone.  Night had set in for more than half an hour, but she had not had the candles lighted, for when Farfrae was away she preferred waiting for him by the firelight, and, if it were not too cold, keeping one of the window-sashes a little way open that the sound of his wheels might reach her ears early.  She was leaning back in the chair, in a more hopeful mood than she had enjoyed since her marriage.  The day had been such a success, and the temporary uneasiness which Henchard’s show of effrontery had wrought in her disappeared with the quiet disappearance of Henchard himself under her husband’s reproof.  The floating evidences of her absurd passion for him, and its consequences, had been destroyed, and she really seemed to have no cause for fear.

The reverie in which these and other subjects mingled was disturbed by a hubbub in the distance, that increased moment by moment.  It did not greatly surprise her, the afternoon having been given up to recreation by a majority of the populace since the passage of the Royal equipages.  But her attention was at once riveted to the matter by the voice of a maid-servant next door, who spoke from an upper window across the street to some other maid even more elevated than she.

“Which way be they going now?” inquired the first with interest.

“I can’t be sure for a moment,” said the second, “because of the malter’s chimbley.  O yes—­I can see ’em.  Well, I declare, I declare!

“What, what?” from the first, more enthusiastically.

“They are coming up Corn Street after all!  They sit back to back!”

“What—­two of ’em—­are there two figures?”

“Yes.  Two images on a donkey, back to back, their elbows tied to one another’s!  She’s facing the head, and he’s facing the tail.”

“Is it meant for anybody in particular?”

“Well—­it mid be.  The man has got on a blue coat and kerseymere leggings; he has black whiskers, and a reddish face.  ’Tis a stuffed figure, with a falseface.”

The din was increasing now—­then it lessened a little.

“There—­I shan’t see, after all!” cried the disappointed first maid.

“They have gone into a back street—­that’s all,” said the one who occupied the enviable position in the attic.  “There—­now I have got ’em all endways nicely!”

“What’s the woman like?  Just say, and I can tell in a moment if ’tis meant for one I’ve in mind.”

“My—­why—­’tis dressed just as she dressed when she sat in the front seat at the time the play-actors came to the Town Hall!”

Lucetta started to her feet, and almost at the instant the door of the room was quickly and softly opened.  Elizabeth-Jane advanced into the firelight.