Henchard and Elizabeth sat conversing¹ by the fire. It was three weeks after Mrs. Henchard's funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a restless, acrobatic flame, poised² on a coal, called from the shady walls the smiles of all shapes that could respond--the old pier-glass, with gilt³ columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry⁴ knobs and handles, and the brass⁵ rosette at the bottom of each riband bell-pull on either side of the chimney-piece.

"Elizabeth, do you think much of old times?" said Henchard.

"Yes, sir; often," she said.

"Who do you put in your pictures of 'em?"

"Mother and father--nobody else hardly."

Henchard always looked like one bent⁶ on resisting pain when Elizabeth-Jane spoke⁷ of Richard Newson as "father." "Ah! I am out of all that, am I not?" he said...."Was Newson a kind father?"

"Yes, sir; very."

Henchard's face settled into an expression of stolid⁸ loneliness which gradually modulated⁹ into something softer. "Suppose I had been your real father?" he said. "Would you have cared for me as much as you cared for Richard Newson?"

"I can't think it," she said quickly. "I can think of no other as my father, except my father."

Henchard's wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper Farfrae by estrangement¹⁰; Elizabeth-Jane by ignorance. It seemed to him that only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the girl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to her and the policy of leaving well alone, till he could no longer sit still. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her chair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer restrain his impulse. "What did your mother tell you about me--my history?" he asked.

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