“I know what you think,” deprecated Henchard running after, almost bowed down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous villainy that he assumed in his former friend’s eyes.  “But I am not what you think!” he cried hoarsely.  “Believe me, Farfrae; I have come entirely on your own and your wife’s account.  She is in danger.  I know no more; and they want you to come.  Your man has gone the other way in a mistake.  O Farfrae! don’t mistrust me—­I am a wretched man; but my heart is true to you still!”

Farfrae, however, did distrust him utterly.  He knew his wife was with child, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and Henchard’s treachery was more credible than his story.  He had in his time heard bitter ironies from Henchard’s lips, and there might be ironies now.  He quickened the horse’s pace, and had soon risen into the high country lying between there and Mellstock, Henchard’s spasmodic run after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil purposes.

The gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Henchard’s eyes; his exertions for Farfrae’s good had been in vain.  Over this repentant sinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven.  He cursed himself like a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses self-respect, the last mental prop under poverty.  To this he had come after a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland shade afforded inadequate illustration.  Presently he began to walk back again along the way by which he had arrived.  Farfrae should at all events have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when he took his journey homeward later on.

Arriving at Casterbridge Henchard went again to Farfrae’s house to make inquiries.  As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his from the staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous disappointment, “O—­it is not he!” The manservant, finding his mistake, had long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Henchard.

“But haven’t you found him?” said the doctor.

“Yes....I cannot tell ’ee!” Henchard replied as he sank down on a chair within the entrance.  “He can’t be home for two hours.”

“H’m,” said the surgeon, returning upstairs.

“How is she?” asked Henchard of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.

“In great danger, father.  Her anxiety to see her husband makes her fearfully restless.  Poor woman—­I fear they have killed her!”

Henchard regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she struck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of the door and onward to his lonely cottage.  So much for man’s rivalry, he thought.  Death was to have the oyster, and Farfrae and himself the shells.  But about Elizabeth-lane; in the midst of his gloom she seemed to him as a pin-point of light.  He had liked the look on her face as she answered him from the stairs.  There had been affection in it, and above all things what he desired now was affection from anything that was good and pure.  She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had a faint dream that he might get to like her as his own,—­if she would only continue to love him.