“And I will.”

“Now, I haven’t told you quite all yet.  My wife Susan has my daughter with her—­the baby that was in her arms at the fair; and this girl knows nothing of me beyond that I am some sort of relation by marriage.  She has grown up in the belief that the sailor to whom I made over her mother, and who is now dead, was her father, and her mother’s husband.  What her mother has always felt, she and I together feel now—­that we can’t proclaim our disgrace to the girl by letting her know the truth.  Now what would you do?—­I want your advice.”

“I think I’d run the risk, and tell her the truth.  She’ll forgive ye both.”

“Never!” said Henchard.  “I am not going to let her know the truth.  Her mother and I be going to marry again; and it will not only help us to keep our child’s respect, but it will be more proper.  Susan looks upon herself as the sailor’s widow, and won’t think o’ living with me as formerly without another religious ceremony—­and she’s right.”

Farfrae thereupon said no more.  The letter to the young Jersey woman was carefully framed by him, and the interview ended, Henchard saying, as the Scotchman left, “I feel it a great relief, Farfrae, to tell some friend o’ this!  You see now that the Mayor of Casterbridge is not so thriving in his mind as it seems he might be from the state of his pocket.”

“I do.  And I’m sorry for ye!” said Farfrae.

When he was gone Henchard copied the letter, and, enclosing a cheque, took it to the post-office, from which he walked back thoughtfully.

“Can it be that it will go off so easily!” he said.  “Poor thing—­God knows!  Now then, to make amends to Susan!”

13.

The cottage which Michael Henchard hired for his wife Susan under her name of Newson—­in pursuance of their plan—­was in the upper or western part of the town, near the Roman wall, and the avenue which overshadowed it.  The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there than anywhere else this autumn—­stretching its rays, as the hours grew later, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the ground-floor of the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance which the foliage screened from the upper parts.  Beneath these sycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sitting-room the tumuli and earth forts of the distant uplands; making it altogether a pleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a past-marked prospect lends.

As soon as the mother and daughter were comfortably installed, with a white-aproned servant and all complete, Henchard paid them a visit, and remained to tea.  During the entertainment Elizabeth was carefully hoodwinked by the very general tone of the conversation that prevailed—­a proceeding which seemed to afford some humour to Henchard, though his wife was not particularly happy in it.  The visit was repeated again and again with business-like determination by the Mayor, who seemed to have schooled himself into a course of strict mechanical rightness towards this woman of prior claim, at any expense to the later one and to his own sentiments.