? It's
very kind of ye, I'm sure.«
    She now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect of
possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced Henchard's name.
»I sometimes fear,« she said with an effort, »that he may be betrayed into some
attempt to - insult you, sir.«
    »But we are the best of friends?«
    »Or to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has been
hardly used.«
    »But we are quite friendly?«
    »Or to do something - that would injure you - hurt you - wound you.« Every
word cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Farfrae was still
incredulous. Henchard, a poor man in his employ, was not to Farfrae's view the
Henchard who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the same man, but that man with
his sinister qualities, formerly latent, quickened into life by his buffetings.
    Farfrae, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her
fears. Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in the
street, waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to be repaired,
farm-horses going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of labour showing
themselves generally on the move. Elizabeth entered her lodging unhappily,
thinking she had done no good, and only made herself appear foolish by her weak
note of warning.
    But Donald Farfrae was one of those men upon whom an incident is never
absolutely lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of view, and the
impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his permanent one. The vision of
Elizabeth's earnest face in the rimy dawn came back to him several times during
the day. Knowing the solidity of her character he did not treat her hints
altogether as idle sounds.
    But he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Henchard's account that
engaged him just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk, later in
the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.
    »About that little seedsman's shop,« he said; »the shop overlooking the
churchyard, which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for our unlucky
fellow-townsman Henchard. It would be a new beginning for him, if a small one;
and I have told the Council that I would head a private subscription among them
to
