er presence was at first a strain upon
Tess, but afterwards an alleviation. At half-past twelve she
left her assistant alone in the kitchen, and, returning to the
sitting-room, waited for the reappearance of Angel's form behind the
bridge.

About one he showed himself. Her face flushed, although he was a
quarter of a mile off. She ran to the kitchen to get the dinner
served by the time he should enter. He went first to the room where
they had washed their hands together the day before, and as he
entered the sitting-room the dish-covers rose from the dishes as if
by his own motion.

"How punctual!" he said.

"Yes. I saw you coming over the bridge," said she.

The meal was passed in commonplace talk of what he had been doing
during the morning at the Abbey Mill, of the methods of bolting and
the old-fashioned machinery, which he feared would not enlighten him
greatly on modern improved methods, some of it seeming to have been
in use ever since the days it ground for the monks in the adjoining
conventual buildings--now a heap of ruins. He left the house again
in the course of an hour, coming home at dusk, and occupying himself
through the evening with his papers. She feared she was in the way
and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she
made herself busy as well as she could for more than an hour.

Clare's shape appeared at the door. "You must not work like this," he
said. "You are not my servant; you are my wife."

She raised her eyes, and brightened somewhat. "I may think myself
that--indeed?" she murmured, in piteous raillery. "You mean in name!
Well, I don't want to be anything more."

"You MAY think so, Tess! You are. What do you mean?"

"I don't know," she said hastily, with tears in her accents. "I
thought I--because I am not respectable, I mean. I told you I
thought I was not respectable enough long ago--and on that account
I didn't want to marry you, only--only you urged me!"

She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It would almost
have won round any man but Angel Clare. Within the remote depths of
his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general,
there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a
soft loam, which turned the edge of everything that attempted to
traverse it. It had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it blocked
his acceptance of Tess. Moreover, his affection itself was less fire
than radiance, and, with