 tongue-scourgings. The
privilege of being in the house she occupied would almost outweigh the personal
humiliation.
    Whether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtship - which it
evidently now was - had an absorbing interest for him.
    Elizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road, and
Farfrae as often made it convenient to create an accidental meeting with her
there. Two miles out, a quarter of a mile from the highway, was the prehistoric
fort called Mai Dun, of huge dimensions and many ramparts, within or upon whose
enclosures a human being, as seen from the road, was but an insignificant speck.
Hitherward Henchard often resorted, glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeless Via
- for it was the original track laid out by the legions of the Empire - to a
distance of two or three miles, his object being to read the progress of affairs
between Farfrae and his charmer.
    One day Henchard was at this spot when a masculine figure came along the
road from Budmouth, and lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye Henchard
expected that Farfrae's features would be disclosed as usual. But the lenses
revealed that to-day the man was not Elizabeth-Jane's lover.
    It was one clothed as a merchant captain; and as he turned in his scrutiny
of the road he revealed his face. Henchard lived a lifetime the moment he saw
it. The face was Newson's.
    Henchard dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other movement.
Newson waited, and Henchard waited - if that could be called a waiting which was
a transfixture. But Elizabeth-Jane did not come. Something or other had caused
her to neglect her customary walk that day. Perhaps Farfrae and she had chosen
another road for variety's sake. But what did that amount to? She might be here
to-morrow, and in any case Newson, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation
of the truth to her, would soon make his opportunity.
    Then he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the ruse by which
he had been once sent away. Elizabeth's strict nature would cause her for the
first time to despise her stepfather, would root out his image as that of an
arch-deceiver, and Newson would reign in her heart in his stead.
    But Newson did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still
awhile he at last retraced his steps, and Henchard felt like a condemned man who
has a few hours' respite. When he reached his own house
