“Yes, my dear Elizabeth-Jane,” explained the other. “But I had a fancy for looking up here.”
“Why?”
“It was here I first met with Newson—on such a day as this.”
“First met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now he’s drowned and gone from us!” As she spoke the girl drew a card from her pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and inscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, “In affectionate memory of Richard Newson, mariner, who was unfortunately lost at sea, in the month of November 184—, aged forty-one years.”
“And it was here,” continued her mother, with more hesitation, “that I last saw the relation we are going to look for—Mr. Michael Henchard.”
“What is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told me.”
“He is, or was—for he may be dead—a connection by marriage,” said her mother deliberately.
“That’s exactly what you have said a score of times before!” replied the young woman, looking about her inattentively. “He’s not a near relation, I suppose?”
“Not by any means.”
“He was a hay-trusser, wasn’t he, when you last heard of him?