to your house you will see what I have sent there
for you."

"O, Alec, I wish you wouldn't give me anything at all! I cannot take
it from you! I don't like--it is not right!"

"It IS right!" he cried lightly. "I am not going to see a woman whom
I feel so tenderly for as I do for you in trouble without trying to
help her."

"But I am very well off! I am only in trouble about--about--not
about living at all!"

She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon
the fork-handle and upon the clods.

"About the children--your brothers and sisters," he resumed. "I've
been thinking of them."

Tess's heart quivered--he was touching her in a weak place. He had
divined her chief anxiety. Since returning home her soul had gone
out to those children with an affection that was passionate.

"If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do something for
them; since your father will not be able to do much, I suppose?"

"He can with my assistance. He must!"

"And with mine."

"No, sir!"

"How damned foolish this is!" burst out d'Urberville. "Why, he
thinks we are the same family; and will be quite satisfied!"

"He don't. I've undeceived him."

"The more fool you!"

D'Urberville in anger retreated from her to the hedge, where he
pulled off the long smockfrock which had disguised him; and rolling
it up and pushing it into the couch-fire, went away.

Tess could not get on with her digging after this; she felt restless;
she wondered if he had gone back to her father's house; and taking
the fork in her hand proceeded homewards.

Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of her sisters.

"O, Tessy--what do you think! 'Liza-Lu is a-crying, and there's a
lot of folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better, but they
think father is dead!"

The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as yet its
sadness, and stood looking at Tess with round-eyed importance till,
beholding the effect produced upon her, she said--

"What, Tess, shan't we talk to father never no more?"

"But father was only a little bit ill!" exclaimed Tess distractedly.

'Liza-Lu came up.

"He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there for mother
said there was no chance for him, because his heart was growed in."

Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the dying one was
out of danger, and the indisposed one was dead. The news meant even
more than it sounded. Her father's li