With this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to the
village, where they obtained a night's lodging.




4.


Henchard's wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in
difficulties. A hundred times she had been upon the point of telling her
daughter Elizabeth-Jane the true story of her life, the tragical crisis
of which had been the transaction at Weydon Fair, when she was not much
older than the girl now beside her. But she had refrained. An innocent
maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the relations between the
genial sailor and her mother were the ordinary ones that they had always
appeared to be. The risk of endangering a child's strong affection by
disturbing ideas which had grown with her growth was to Mrs. Henchard
too fearful a thing to contemplate. It had seemed, indeed folly to think
of making Elizabeth-Jane wise.

But Susan Henchard's fear of losing her dearly loved daughter's heart by
a revelation had little to do with any sense of wrong-doing on her own
part. Her simplicity--the original ground of Henchard's contempt for
her--had allowed her to live on in the conviction that Newson
had acquired a morally real and justifiable right to her by his
purchase--though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were
vague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young
matron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer; and were
there not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might