 not touch.
    Susan Henchard's daughter bore up against the frosty ache of the treatment,
as she had borne up under worse things, and contrived as soon as possible to get
out of the inharmonious room without being missed. The Scotchman seemed hardly
the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise
between love and friendship - that period in the history of a love when alone it
can be said to be unalloyed with pain.
    She stoically looked from her bedroom window, and contemplated her fate as
if it were written on the top of the church-tower hard by. »Yes,« she said at
last, bringing down her palm upon the sill with a pat: »He is the second man of
that story she told me!«
    All this time Henchard's smouldering sentiments towards Lucetta had been
fanned into higher and higher inflammation by the circumstances of the case. He
was discovering that the young woman for whom he once felt a pitying warmth
which had been almost chilled out of him by reflection, was, when now qualified
with a slight inaccessibility and a more matured beauty, the very being to make
him satisfied with life. Day after day proved to him, by her silence, that it
was no use to think of bringing her round by holding aloof; so he gave in, and
called upon her again, Elizabeth-Jane being absent.
    He crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his
strong, warm gaze upon her - like the sun beside the moon in comparison with
Farfrae's modest look - and with something of a hailfellow bearing, as, indeed,
was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by her change of
position, and held out her hand to him in such cool friendship, that he became
deferential, and sat down with a perceptible loss of power. He understood but
little of fashion in dress, yet enough to feel himself inadequate in appearance
beside her whom he had hitherto been dreaming of as almost his property. She
said something very polite about his being good enough to call. This caused him
to recover balance. He looked her oddly in the face, losing his awe.
    »Why, of course I have called, Lucetta,« he said.
    »What does that nonsense mean? You know I couldn't have helped myself if I
had wished - that is, if I had any kindness at all. I've called to say that I am
ready, as soon as custom will permit, to give you my name in return for your
devotion,
