Whenever he wanted directions he sent a
message, or note with neither heading nor signature, to
which she was obliged to reply in the same off-hand
style. Poor Bathsheba began to suffer now from the
most torturing sting of ali-a sensation that she was
despised.
The autumn wore away gloomily enough amid these
melancholy conjectures, and Christmas-day came, com-
pleting a year of her legal widowhood, and two years
and a quarter of her life alone. On examining her
heart it appeared beyond measure strange that the sub-
ject of which the season might have been supposed
suggestive -- the event in the hall at Boldwood's -- was
not agitating her at all; but instead, an agonizing con-
viction that everybody abjured her -- for what she could
not tell -- and that Oak was the ringleader of the
recusants. Coming out of church that day she looked
round in hope that Oak, whose bass voice she had
heard rolling out from the gallery overhead in a most
unconcerned manner, might chance to linger in her path
in the old way. There he was, as usual, coming down
the path behind her. But on seeing Bathsheba turn, he
looked aside, and as soon as he got beyond the gate,
and there was the barest excuse for a divergence, he
made one, and vanished.
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