’So I have made arrangements to fetch you home at once.  It is hardly worth while for you to attempt to bring with you any luggage you may have gathered about you (beyond mere clothing).  Dispose of superfluous things at a broker’s; your bringing them would only make a talk in this parish, and lead people to believe we had long been keeping house separately.

’Will next Monday suit you for coming?  You have nothing to do that can occupy you for more than a day or two, as far as I can see, and the remainder of this week will afford ample time.  I can be in London the night before, and we will come down together by the mid-day train—­Your very affectionate husband,

’AENEAS MANSTON.

‘Now, of course, I shall no longer write to you as Mrs. Rondley.’

The address on the envelope was—­

MRS. MANSTON,
   41 CHARLES SQUARE,
     HOXTON,
        LONDON, N.

He took the letter to the house, and it being too late for the country post, sent one of the stablemen with it to Casterbridge, instead of troubling to go to Budmouth with it himself as heretofore.  He had no longer any necessity to keep his condition a secret.

7.  FROM THE TWENTY-SECOND TO THE TWENTY-SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER

But the next morning Manston found that he had been forgetful of another matter, in naming the following Monday to his wife for the journey.

The fact was this.  A letter had just come, reminding him that he had left the whole of the succeeding week open for an important business engagement with a neighbouring land-agent, at that gentleman’s residence thirteen miles off.  The particular day he had suggested to his wife, had, in the interim, been appropriated by his correspondent.  The meeting could not now be put off.

So he wrote again to his wife, stating that business, which could not be postponed, called him away from home on Monday, and would entirely prevent him coming all the way to fetch her on Sunday night as he had intended, but that he would meet her at the Carriford Road Station with a conveyance when she arrived there in the evening.

The next day came his wife’s answer to his first letter, in which she said that she would be ready to be fetched at the time named.  Having already written his second letter, which was by that time in her hands, he made no further reply.

The week passed away.  The steward had, in the meantime, let it become generally known in the village that he was a married man, and by a little judicious management, sound family reasons for his past secrecy upon the subject, which were floated as adjuncts to the story, were placidly received; they seemed so natural and justifiable to the unsophisticated minds of nine-tenths of his neighbours, that curiosity in the matter, beyond a strong curiosity to see the lady’s face, was well-nigh extinguished.

X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT