The exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region impressed Henchard more than he had expected.  The lugubrious harmony of the spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient of effects scenes, and adumbrations.  It reduced his heartburning to melancholy, and he exclaimed, “Why the deuce did I come here!” He went on past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died, in times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a single gentleman; and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town.

For the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter disappointment, he might well have been pitied.  He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon.  In words he could blame his wife, but not in his heart; and had he obeyed the wise directions outside her letter this pain would have been spared him for long—­possibly for ever, Elizabeth-Jane seeming to show no ambition to quit her safe and secluded maiden courses for the speculative path of matrimony.

The morning came after this night of unrest, and with it the necessity for a plan.  He was far too self-willed to recede from a position, especially as it would involve humiliation.  His daughter he had asserted her to be, and his daughter she should always think herself, no matter what hyprocrisy it involved.

But he was ill-prepared for the first step in this new situation.  The moment he came into the breakfast-room Elizabeth advanced with open confidence to him and took him by the arm.

“I have thought and thought all night of it,” she said frankly.  “And I see that everything must be as you say.  And I am going to look upon you as the father that you are, and not to call you Mr. Henchard any more.  It is so plain to me now.  Indeed, father, it is.  For, of course, you would not have done half the things you have done for me, and let me have my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only been your step-daughter!  He—­Mr. Newson—­whom my poor mother married by such a strange mistake” (Henchard was glad that he had disguised matters here), “was very kind—­O so kind!” (she spoke with tears in her eyes); “but that is not the same thing as being one’s real father after all.  Now, father, breakfast is ready!” she said cheerfully.

Henchard bent and kissed her cheek.  The moment and the act he had prefigured for weeks with a thrill of pleasure; yet it was no less than a miserable insipidity to him now that it had come.  His reinstation of her mother had been chiefly for the girl’s sake, and the fruition of the whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this.

20.

Of all the enigmas which ever confronted a girl there can have been seldom one like that which followed Henchard’s announcement of himself to Elizabeth as her father.  He had done it in an ardour and an agitation which had half carried the point of affection with her; yet, behold, from the next morning onwards his manner was constrained as she had never seen it before.