“What?”

“I am no accomplished person.  And a companion to you must be that.”

“O, not necessarily.”

“Not?  But I can’t help using rural words sometimes, when I don’t mean to.”

“Never mind, I shall like to know them.”

“And—­O, I know I shan’t do!”—­she cried with a distressful laugh.  “I accidentally learned to write round hand instead of ladies’-hand.  And, of course, you want some one who can write that?”

“Well, no.”

“What, not necessary to write ladies’-hand?” cried the joyous Elizabeth.

“Not at all.”

“But where do you live?”

“In Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here after twelve o’clock to-day.”

Elizabeth expressed her astonishment.

“I have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was getting ready.  The house I am going into is that one they call High-Place Hall—­the old stone one looking down the lane to the market.  Two or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all:  I sleep there to-night for the first time.  Now will you think over my proposal, and meet me here the first fine day next week, and say if you are still in the same mind?”

Elizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an unbearable position, joyfully assented; and the two parted at the gate of the churchyard.

21.

As a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked till some mature experience enforces it, so did this High-Place Hall now for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth-Jane, though her ears had heard its name on a hundred occasions.

Her mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger, and the house, and her own chance of living there, all the rest of the day.  In the afternoon she had occasion to pay a few bills in the town and do a little shopping when she learnt that what was a new discovery to herself had become a common topic about the streets.  High-Place Hall was undergoing repair; a lady was coming there to live shortly; all the shop-people knew it, and had already discounted the chance of her being a customer.

Elizabeth-Jane could, however, add a capping touch to information so new to her in the bulk.  The lady, she said, had arrived that day.

When the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render chimneys, attics, and roofs invisible, Elizabeth, almost with a lover’s feeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of High-Place Hall.  She went up the street in that direction.

The Hall, with its grey facade and parapet, was the only residence of its sort so near the centre of the town.  It had, in the first place, the characteristics of a country mansion—­birds’ nests in its chimneys, damp nooks where fungi grew and irregularities of surface direct from Nature’s trowel.  At night the forms of passengers were patterned by the lamps in black shadows upon the pale walls.