Suspicion: Fanny is Sent For
- Bathsheba gives Troy the silent treatment during the evening after they return from the market, and he doesn't seem to mind all that much.
- The next day, Troy asks her for twenty pounds, which is a hefty sum of money. She asks him if it's for gambling on the horse races, and after a pause, he says "Sure, why not?"
- We readers know, though, that he's probably getting the money for Fanny.
- Bathsheba begs him to stay home.
- Finally, Troy admits that the money isn't for gambling. When he won't tell her what it's for, though, the two get into a terrible argument. Each of them tells the other that they wish they'd never gotten married.
- Bathsheba eventually gives up and hands over the money. Troy also says he plans on leaving the next day to go to Bath. Again, he won't tell Bathsheba about why he's going.
- At this point, Troy opens his pocket watch and Bathsheba sees a lock of blond hair fall out of it. She knows instantly that the hair belongs to another woman, though Troy tries to say it's hers.
- He eventually admits that it's the hair of a young woman he was going to marry before he met Bathsheba. He refuses to say the woman's name, though.
- But it comes out that the girl they met on the road a few days earlier is someone that Troy used to be engaged to, and that the hair in his watch is hers.
- At this point, Troy doesn't want to hash out details any longer, so he gets up and leaves the house. Bathsheba dissolves into tears.
- She leaves the house to walk in the fields. While doing so, she sees Farmer Boldwood at a distance stopping for a chat with Gabriel Oak.
- Joseph Poorgrass also stops to talk to the men, and then comes up the road to Bathsheba to tell her that her former servant, Fanny Robin, has died in the shelter at Casterbridge.
- Mr. Boldwood plans on sending a wagon for her body, but Bathsheba says she'll hear nothing of it. Fanny was her servant, so she'll send the cart.
- During the conversation, Bathsheba learns that Fanny had travelled to Casterbridge along the main road a few days earlier. This, of course, gets her wondering about whether this was the woman she saw with Troy.
- Apparently, Sergeant Troy has also said in the past that a man from his regiment used to be sweethearts with Fanny Robin. Bathsheba is starting to put two and two together.