"More bread-and-butter?" said Lucetta to Henchard and Farfrae equally,
holding out between them a plateful of long slices. Henchard took a
slice by one end and Donald by the other; each feeling certain he was
the man meant; neither let go, and the slice came in two.
"Oh--I am so sorry!" cried Lucetta, with a nervous titter. Farfrae tried
to laugh; but he was too much in love to see the incident in any but a
tragic light.
"How ridiculous of all three of them!" said Elizabeth to herself.
Henchard left the house with a ton of conjecture, though without a grain
of proof, that the counterattraction was Farfrae; and therefore he
would not make up his mind. Yet to Elizabeth-Jane it was plain as the
town-pump that Donald and Lucetta were incipient lovers. More than once,
in spite of her care, Lucetta had been unable to restrain her glance
from flitting across into Farfrae's eyes like a bird to its nest. But
Henchard was constructed upon too large a scale to discern such minutiae
as these by an evening light, which to him were as the notes of an
insect that lie above the compass of the human ear.
But he was disturbed. And the sense of occult rivalry in suitorship was
so much superadded to the palpable rivalry of their business lives. To
the coarse materiality of that rivalry it added an inflaming soul.
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