Christine had soon recovered her composure, but she saw that Mrs. Wake was gloomy.  ‘What does it mean, Mrs. Wake?’ she said.  ‘Is it ominous?’

‘It is a sign of a violent death in the family.’

’Don’t talk of it.  I don’t believe such things; and don’t mention it to Mr. Long when he comes.  He’s not in the family yet, you know.’

‘O no, it cannot refer to him,’ said Mrs. Wake musingly.

‘Some remote cousin, perhaps,’ observed Christine, no less willing to humour her than to get rid of a shapeless dread which the incident had caused in her own mind.  ‘And—­supper is almost ready, Mrs. Wake?’

‘In three-quarters of an hour.’

Mrs. Wake left the room, and Christine sat on.  Though it still wanted fifteen minutes to the hour at which Nicholas had promised to be there, she began to grow impatient.  After the accustomed ticking the dead silence was oppressive.  But she had not to wait so long as she had expected; steps were heard approaching the door, and there was a knock.

Christine was already there to open it.  The entrance had no lamp, but it was not particularly dark out of doors.  She could see the outline of a man, and cried cheerfully, ‘You are early; it is very good of you.’

’I beg pardon.  It is not Mr. Bellston himself—­only a messenger with his bag and great-coat.  But he will be here soon.’

The voice was not the voice of Nicholas, and the intelligence was strange.  ‘I—­I don’t understand.  Mr. Bellston?’ she faintly replied.

’Yes, ma’am.  A gentleman—­a stranger to me—­gave me these things at Casterbridge station to bring on here, and told me to say that Mr. Bellston had arrived there, and is detained for half-an-hour, but will be here in the course of the evening.’

She sank into a chair.  The porter put a small battered portmanteau on the floor, the coat on a chair, and looking into the room at the spread table said, ’If you are disappointed, ma’am, that your husband (as I s’pose he is) is not come, I can assure you he’ll soon be here.  He’s stopped to get a shave, to my thinking, seeing he wanted it.  What he said was that I could tell you he had heard the news in Ireland, and would have come sooner, his hand being forced; but was hindered crossing by the weather, having took passage in a sailing vessel.  What news he meant he didn’t say.’

‘Ah, yes,’ she faltered.  It was plain that the man knew nothing of her intended re-marriage.

Mechanically rising and giving him a shilling, she answered to his ’good-night,’ and he withdrew, the beat of his footsteps lessening in the distance.  She was alone; but in what a solitude.

Christine stood in the middle of the hall, just as the man had left her, in the gloomy silence of the stopped clock within the adjoining room, till she aroused herself, and turning to the portmanteau and great-coat brought them to the light of the candles, and examined them.  The portmanteau bore painted upon it the initials ‘J.  B.’ in white letters—­the well-known initials of her husband.