Boldwood mistook his confusion: sensitive persons
are always ready with their "Is it I?" in preference to
objective reasoning.
"The question was perfectly fair." he returned -- and
there was something incongruous in the serious earnest-
ness with which he applied himself to an argument on
a valentine. "You know it is always expected that
privy inquiries will be made: that's where the -- fun
lies." If the word "fun" had been "torture." it could
not have been uttered with a more constrained and
restless countenance than was Boldwood's then."
Soon parting from Gabriel, the lonely and reserved
man returned to his house to breakfast -- feeling twinges
of shame and regret at having so far exposed his mood
by those fevered questions to a stranger. He again
placed the letter on the mantelpiece, and sat down to
think of the circumstances attending it by the light of
Gabriel's information.
CHAPTER XVI
ALL SAINTS' AND ALL SOULS'
ON a week-day morning a small congregation, con-
sisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees
in the mouldy nave of a church called All Saints', in
the distant barrack-town before mentioned, at the end
of a service without a sermon.
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