Henchard’s eyes followed Farfrae’s, and he saw that the object of his gaze was no sample-showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had just come out of a shop over the way.  She, on her part, was quite unconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those young women whose very plumes, like those of Juno’s bird, are set with Argus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken.

Henchard went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant after all in Farfrae’s look at Elizabeth-Jane at that juncture.  Yet he could not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in her, of a fleeting kind.  Thereupon promptly came to the surface that idiosyncrasy of Henchard’s which had ruled his courses from the beginning and had mainly made him what he was.  Instead of thinking that a union between his cherished step-daughter and the energetic thriving Donald was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the very possibility.

Time had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape in action.  But he was not now the Henchard of former days.  He schooled himself to accept her will, in this as in other matters, as absolute and unquestionable.  He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose for him such regard as he had regained from her by his devotion, feeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur her dislike by keeping her near.

But the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in the evening he said, with the stillness of suspense:  “Have you seen Mr. Farfrae to-day, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth-Jane started at the question; and it was with some confusion that she replied “No.”

“Oh—­that’s right—­that’s right....It was only that I saw him in the street when we both were there.”  He was wondering if her embarrassment justified him in a new suspicion—­that the long walks which she had latterly been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him, had anything to do with the young man.  She did not enlighten him, and lest silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavourable to their present friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another channel.

Henchard was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for good or for evil.  But the solicitus timor of his love—­the dependence upon Elizabeth’s regard into which he had declined (or, in another sense, to which he had advanced)—­denaturalized him.  He would often weigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a deed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly have been his first instinct.  And now, uneasy at the thought of a passion for Farfrae which should entirely displace her mild filial sympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly.