Lucetta and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night and the street lamps were lighted, they had kept their shutters unclosed. In the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely.
“Your father was distant with you,” said Lucetta.
“Yes.” And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Henchard’s seeming speech to Lucetta she continued, “It is because he does not think I am respectable. I have tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in vain! My mother’s separation from my father was unfortunate for me. You don’t know what it is to have shadows like that upon your life.”
Lucetta seemed to wince. “I do not—of that kind precisely,” she said, “but you may feel a—sense of disgrace—shame—in other ways.”
“Have you ever had any such feeling?” said the younger innocently.
“O no,” said Lucetta quickly. “I was thinking of—what happens sometimes when women get themselves in strange positions in the eyes of the world from no fault of their own.”
“It must make them very unhappy afterwards.”
“It makes them anxious; for might not other women despise them?”
“Not altogether despise them. Yet not quite like or respect them.”
Lucetta winced again. Her past was by no means secure from investigation, even in Casterbridge. For one thing Henchard had never returned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in her first excitement. Possibly they were destroyed; but she could have wished that they had never been written.