Doubts Arise: Doubts Linger
- Bathsheba doesn't know what to make of her husband's disappearance. The more time goes by, the stranger she feels. In her mind, she belongs to him, and she can't imagine why he wouldn't come home to claim her.
- Her pride makes it very hard to admit to herself that Troy loved another woman more than her.
- The first Saturday after Troy's disappearance, Bathsheba goes to Casterbridge alone on business.
- While she's at the market, she overhears someone asking about her. The man says that he has to deliver the terrible news that her husband is drowned.
- She can't believe her ears, and she faints before anything else is said. At this same moment, Boldwood is standing behind her, and he catches her in his arms as she falls. What a concidence, eh?
- It turns out that someone on the coast found Troy's clothes on the beach. Another person saw him getting pulled out to sea by a riptide. But no one saw the sailors save Troy's bacon.
- Boldwood carries Bathsheba to a nearby hotel. When she regains consciousness, she demands to go home. Boldwood can only think about how wonderful it was to hold her in his arms. Oh, jeepers.
- Bathsheba is barely home for an hour before Liddy knocks on her bedroom door and says that she'll need a black dress for mourning.
- Bathsheba won't hear of it, though, because she doesn't believe that Troy is actually dead. After all, they never found his body.
- Bathsheba's confidence in Troy's survival starts to wane when she sees the announcement of his death in the paper that week and reads the eyewitness account of the person who saw him struggling out at sea.
- Worse yet, she starts to wonder if Troy killed himself on purpose to be with Fanny. When it's time for her to collect Troy's clothes, she opens his pocket watch and finds the lock of Fanny Robin's hair still inside it.
- Figuring that it's best that Troy and Fanny are now together, she holds Fanny's lock of hair over the fire, then snatches it back at the last second to remember Fanny by.