If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Jane's mother inadvertently
alluded to her favourite's movements, the girl would implore her by a
look to be silent; and her husband would say, "What--are you, too, my
enemy?"
18.
There came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth,
as the box passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel
across the highway.
Her mother was ill--too unwell to leave her room. Henchard, who treated
her kindly, except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the
richest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came,
and they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied.
Elizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the
second morning, and Henchard sat down alone. He was startled to see
a letter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had
expected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked
at it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and then he
read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.
The writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would
be for any further communications to proceed between them now that
his re-marriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only
straightforward course open to him she was bound to admit.
Pages:
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173