d walked thus far, put on her pretty thin ones
of patent leather, and, stuffing the former into the hedge by the
gatepost where she might readily find them again, descended the hill;
the freshness of colour she had derived from the keen air thinning
away in spite of her as she drew near the parsonage.

Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing
favoured her. The shrubs on the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably
in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of
imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was
the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature
or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts,
birth, death, and after-death, they were the same.

She nerved herself by an effort, entered the swing-gate, and rang
the door-bell. The thing was done; there could be no retreat. No;
the thing was not done. Nobody answered to her ringing. The effort
had to be risen to and made again. She rang a second time, and the
agitation of the act, coupled with her weariness after the fifteen
miles' walk, led her support herself while she waited by resting her
hand on her hip, and her elbow against the wall of the porch. The
wind was so nipping that the ivy-leaves had become wizened and gray,
each tapping incessantly upon its neighbour with a disquieting stir
of her nerves. A piece of blood-stained paper, caught up from some
meat-buyer's dust-heap, beat up and down the road without the gate;
too flimsy to rest, too heavy to fly away; and a few straws kept it
company.

The second peal had been louder, and still nobody came. Then she
walked out of the porch, opened the gate, and passed through. And
though she looked dubiously at the house-front as if inclined to
return, it was with a breath of relied that she closed the gate. A
feeling haunted her that she might have been recognized (though how
she could not tell), and orders been given not to admit her.

Tess went as far as the corner. She had done all she could do; but
determined not to escape present trepidation at the expense of future
distress, she walked back again quite past the house, looking up at
all the windows.

Ah--the explanation was that they were all at church, every one. She
remembered her husband saying that his father always insisted upon
the household, servants included, going to morning-service, and,
as a consequence, eating cold food when they came home. It