“Good. All’s well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see him again.”
“Very well, sir.”
“You promise?”
She hesitated for a moment, and then said—
“Yes, if you much wish it.”
“I do. He’s an enemy to our house!”
When she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a heavy hand to Farfrae thus:—
Sir,—I make request that henceforth you and my stepdaughter be as strangers to each other. She on her part has promised to welcome no more addresses from you; and I trust, therefore, you will not attempt to force them upon her.
M. HENCHARD.
One would almost have supposed Henchard to have had policy to see that no better modus vivendi could be arrived at with Farfrae than by encouraging him to become his son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying over a rival had nothing to recommend it to the Mayor’s headstrong faculties. With all domestic finesse of that kind he was hopelessly at variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as wrongheaded as a buffalo’s; and his wife had not ventured to suggest the course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.