ajar just now, and I saw you. For your own safety I must go. You
don't know. Well? Is it to be yes at last?'
'I am only just up, Mr Clare, and it is too early to take me to
task!' she pouted. 'You need not call me Flirt. 'Tis cruel and
untrue. Wait till by and by. Please wait till by and by! I will
really think seriously about it between now and then. Let me go
downstairs!'
She looked a little like what he said she was as, holding the candle
sideways, she tried to smile away the seriousness of her words.
'Call me Angel, then, and not Mr Clare.'
'Angel.'
'Angel dearest--why not?'
''Twould mean that I agree, wouldn't it?'
'It would only mean that you love me, even if you cannot marry me;
and you were so good as to own that long ago.'
'Very well, then, 'Angel dearest', if I MUST,' she murmured, looking
at her candle, a roguish curl coming upon her mouth, notwithstanding
her suspense.
Clare had resolved never to kiss her until he had obtained her
promise; but somehow, as Tess stood there in her prettily tucked-up
milking gown, her hair carelessly heaped upon her head till there
should be leisure to arrange it when skimming and milking were done,
he broke his resolve, and brought his lips to her cheek for one
moment. She passed downstairs very quickly, never looking back at
him or saying another word. The other maids were already down,
and the subject was not pursued. Except Marian, they all looked
wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the sad yellow rays which
the morning candles emitted in contrast with the first cold signals
of the dawn without.
When skimming was done--which, as the milk diminished with the
approach of autumn, was a lessening process day by day--Retty and
the rest went out. The lovers followed them.
'Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are they not?' he
musingly observed to her, as he regarded the three figures tripping
before him through the frigid pallor of opening day.
'Not so very different, I think,' she said.
'Why do you think that?'
'There are very few women's lives that are not--tremulous,' Tess
replied, pausing over the new word as if it impressed her. 'There's
more in those three than you think.'
'What is in them?'
'Almost either of 'em,' she began, 'would make--perhaps would
make--a properer wife than I. And perhaps they love you as well
as I--almost.'
'O, Tessy!'
There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her to hear the
impatient exclamation, though she had resolved so intrepidly to let
generosity make one bid against herself. That was now done, and she
had not the power to attempt self-immolation a second time then.
