But she determined to repress all evidences of feeling.
She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived.
Her pride was indeed brought low by despairing discoveries of her spoliation by marriage with a less pure nature than her own.
She chafed to and fro in rebelliousness, like a caged leopard; her whole soul was in arms, and the blood fired her face.
Until she had met Troy, Bathsheba had been proud of her position as a woman; it had been a glory to her to know that her lips had been touched by no man's on earth — that her waist had never been encircled by a lover's arm.
She hated herself now.
In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first goodlooking young fellow who should choose to salute them.
She had never taken kindly to the idea of marriage in the abstract as did the majority of women she saw about her.
In the turmoil of her anxiety for her lover she had agreed to marry him; but the perception that had accompanied her happiest hours on this account was rather that of self-sacrifice than of promotion and honour. Although she scarcely knew the divinity's name, Diana was the goddess whom Bathsheba instinctively adored.
That she had never, by look, word, or sign, encouraged a man to approach her — that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole — were facts now bitterly remembered.
O, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and dare Troy or any other man to pollute a hair of her head by his interference!
The next morning she rose earlier than usual, and had the horse saddled for her ride round the farm in the customary way.
When she came in at half-past eight — their usual hour for breakfasting — she was informed that her husband had risen, taken his breakfast, and driven off to Casterbridge with the gig and Poppet.
After breakfast she was cool and collected — quite herself in fact — and she rambled to the gate, intending to walk to another quarter of the farm, which she still personally superintended as well as her duties in the house would permit, continually, however, finding herself preceded in forethought by Gabriel Oak, for whom she began to entertain the genuine friendship of a sister.
Of course, she sometimes thought of him in the light of an old lover, and had momentary imaginings of what life with him as a husband would have been like; also of life with Boldwood under the same conditions.
But Bathsheba, though she could feel, was not much given to futile dreaming, and her musings under this head were short and entirely confined to the times when Troy's neglect was more than ordinarily evident.
She saw coming up the road a man like Mr. Boldwood. It was Mr. Boldwood.
Bathsheba blushed painfully, and watched.
The farmer stopped when still a long way off, and held up his hand to Gabriel Oak, who was in a footpath across the field.
The two men then approached each other and seemed to engage in earnest conversation.
Thus they continued for a long time.
Joseph Poorgrass now passed near them, wheeling a barrow of apples up the hill to Bathsheba's residence.
Boldwood and Gabriel called to him, spoke to him for a few minutes, and then all three parted, Joseph immediately coming up the hill with his barrow.
Bathsheba, who had seen this pantomime with some surprise, experienced great relief when Boldwood turned back again.
"Well, what's the message, Joseph?" she said.
He set down his barrow, and, putting upon himself the refined aspect that a conversation with a lady re- quired, spoke to Bathsheba over the gate.
"You'll never see Fanny Robin no more — use nor principal — ma'am."
"Why?"
"Because she's dead in the Union."
"Fanny dead — never!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What did she die from?"
"I don't know for certain; but I should be inclined to think it was from general weakness of constitution.
She was such a limber maid that 'a could stand no hardship, even when I knowed her, and 'a went like a candle-snoff, so 'tis said.
She was took bad in the morning, and, being quite feeble and worn out, she died in the evening.
She belongs by law to our parish; and Mr. Boldwood is going to send a waggon at three this afternoon to fetch her home here and bury her."
"Indeed I shall not let Mr. Boldwood do any such thing-I shall do it!
Fanny was my uncle's servant, and, although I only knew her for a couple of days, FANNY IS SENT FOR she belongs to me.
How very, very sad this is! — the idea of Fanny being in a workhouse."
Bathsheba had begun to know what suffering was, and she spoke with real feeling….
"Send across to Mr. Boldwood's, and say that Mrs. Troy will take upon herself the duty of fetching an old servant of the family….
We ought not to put her in a waggon; we'll get a hearse."
"There will hardly be time, ma'am, will there?"
"Perhaps not." she said, musingly.
"When did you say we must be at the door — three o'clock?"
"Three o'clock this afternoon, ma'am, so to speak it."
"Very well-you go with it.
A pretty waggon is better than an ugly hearse, after all.
Joseph, have the new spring waggon with the blue body and red wheels, and wash it very clean.
And, Joseph — — "