Far from the Madding Crowd thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited her uncle's estate and is now wealthy. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she employs him. Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words, "Marry me".
The Woodlanders gossip (but not before Tangs tries to injure Fitzpiers with a man trap) The Woodlanders also contains many poetic descriptions on the natural world, the countryside and the changing seasons. Florence Emily Hardy, his second wife, recorded that in 1874 Hardy "put aside a woodland story", which ten years later evolved into "The Woodlanders". It was intended to be the successor to his 1874 "Far from the Madding Crowd", but he laid the novel aside to work on other things. Hardy eventually decided to return to his "woodland story" after the editor of "Macmillan's Magazine" asked for a new serial