The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind.

Her nature was rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.
Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided.

And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about him.
She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as before.

But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm.

'What came by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would say.