The poor woman smiled faintly; she did not enjoy pleasantries on a
situation into which she had entered solely for the sake of her girl's
reputation. She liked them so little, indeed, that there was room for
wonder why she had countenanced deception at all, and had not bravely
let the girl know her history. But the flesh is weak; and the true
explanation came in due course.

"O Michael!" she said, "I am afraid all this is taking up your time and
giving trouble--when I did not expect any such thing!" And she looked at
him and at his dress as a man of affluence, and at the furniture he had
provided for the room--ornate and lavish to her eyes.

"Not at all," said Henchard, in rough benignity. "This is only a
cottage--it costs me next to nothing. And as to taking up my time"--here
his red and black visage kindled with satisfaction--"I've a splendid
fellow to superintend my business now--a man whose like I've never been
able to lay hands on before. I shall soon be able to leave everything
to him, and have more time to call my own than I've had for these last
twenty years."

Henchard's visits here grew so frequent and so regular that it soon
became whispered, and then openly discussed in Casterbridge that the
masterful, coercive Mayor of the town was raptured and enervated by the
genteel widow Mrs. Newson. His well-known haughty indifference to the
society of womankind, his silent avoidance of converse with the sex,
contributed a piquancy to what would otherwise have been an unromantic
matter enough. That such a poor fragile woman should be his choice was
inexplicable, except on the ground that the engagement was a family
affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that
they were related in some way. Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys