He did not perceive, branching from the column down which his finger ran, a small twist, called a shunting-line, inserted at a particular place, to imply that at that point the train was divided into two. The inspection was carelessly made, the leaf being kept open by the aid of one hand, whilst the other still held his cup of coffee much more carelessly than would have been the case had the expected newcomer been Cytherea Graye, instead of his lawful wife. Whilst taking his breakfast on this particular morning, the clock pointing to eight, the horse and gig that was to take him to Chettlewood waiting ready at the door, Manston hurriedly cast his eyes down the column of Bradshaw which showed the details and duration of the selected train’s journey. The proceedings of the steward demand the first notice. Manston’s journey from London to her husband’s house a day of singular and great events, influencing the present and future of nearly all the personages whose actions in a complex drama form the subject of this record. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. train, by which his wife actually arrives in that interval, she decides to lodge at the Three Tranters and apparently perishes when that inn and adjoining cottages burn down. A ‘shunt’, a diagonal line scarcely five millimetres long, defined as a ‘thin line in the middle of trains … intended to show the continuous route of the traveller’, 2 goes unobserved in a microsecond lapse of concentration by Manston. The misreading of the Bradshaw’s Guide by Miss Aldclyffe’s steward Manston is to have fateful consequences, anticipating similar instances of accident, chance and coincidence in all of Hardy’s later fiction. In this pivotal scene, the villain of the piece consults, all too hastily, a copy of the Victorian rail-users’ bible.
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