The Art of Manipulation — Far from the Madding Crowd

That same evening Gabriel leans on Coggan's gate until Bathsheba's gig passes with weary Liddy, listless mistress and horse, and relief floods him so completely he forgets Cain Ball's report. Boldwood walks by toward the farm to apologise for road fury, believing she has only visited Liddy; Liddy refuses him at the door while Bathsheba pulls down the blind. At ten o'clock Boldwood sees Troy leave the carrier's and intercepts him with a business proposal, not a sermon: fifty sovereigns now, five hundred on the wedding day, and a settlement for Fanny Robin if Troy will marry her and leave Weatherbury tonight. Troy plays along, accepts cash, then Bathsheba comes up the hill calling Frank. Boldwood crouches listening as lovers arrange a secret parlour tryst with the household sent away. Troy mocks the farmer's weakness, nearly provokes strangulation, then waves a Bath newspaper through the chained door: married at St Ambrose's on the seventeenth. He calls Boldwood's jealousy ridiculous, refuses to make any woman's misery a matter of huckster and sale, wraps gold in notes, and throws the lot into the road. Troy locks himself in; Boldwood walks the hills till dawn like an unhappy shade on the banks of Acheron.