Unimpassioned as he was, it impressed him painfully, and puzzled him

not a little, for he could not understand the age of the elder child

being what it was stated to be. However, there was no doubt that the

newspaper report was in some way true.

"Their cup of sorrow is now full!" he said: and thought and thought

of Sue, and what she had gained by leaving him.

Arabella having made her home at Alfredston, and the schoolmaster

coming to market there every Saturday, it was not wonderful that in

a few weeks they met again--the precise time being just alter her

return from Christminster, where she had stayed much longer than she

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had at first intended, keeping an interested eye on Jude, though Jude

had seen no more of her. Phillotson was on his way homeward when he

encountered Arabella, and she was approaching the town.

"You like walking out this way, Mrs. Cartlett?" he said.

"I've just begun to again," she replied. "It is where I lived

as maid and wife, and all the past things of my life that are

interesting to my feelings are mixed up with this road. And they

have been stirred up in me too, lately; for I've been visiting at

Christminster. Yes; I've seen Jude."

"Ah! How do they bear their terrible affliction?"

"In a ve-ry strange way--ve-ry strange! She don't live with him any

longer. I only heard of it as a certainty just before I left; though

I had thought things were drifting that way from their manner when I

called on them."

"Not live with her husband? Why, I should have thought 'twould have

united them more."

"He's not her husband, after all. She has never really married him

although they have passed as man and wife so long. And now, instead

of this sad event making 'em hurry up, and get the thing done

legally, she's took in a queer religious way, just as I was in my

affliction at losing Cartlett, only hers is of a more 'sterical sort

than mine. And she says, so I was told, that she's your wife in the

eye of Heaven and the Church--yours only; and can't be anybody else's

by any act of man."

"Ah--indeed? ... Separated, have they!"

"You see, the eldest boy was mine--"

"Oh--yours!"

"Yes, poor little fellow--born in lawful wedlock, thank God. And

perhaps she feels, over and above other things, that I ought to have

been in her place. I can't say. However, as for me, I am soon off

from here. I've got Father to look after now, and we can't live in

such a hum-drum place as this. I hope soon to be in a bar again at

Christminster, or some other big town."




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