She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o’clock every morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough, waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till it was now nearly one o’clock. Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness. In that moment of oblivion she sank gently against him.
D’Urberville withdrew his feet from the stirrups, turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to support her.
This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a little push from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse, though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest he rode.
‘That is devilish unkind!’ he said. ‘I mean no harm—only to keep you from falling.’
She pondered suspiciously; till, thinking that
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