are wise you will show it to the world more than you do before it fades. . . . And yet, Tess, will you came back to me? Upon my soul I don’t like to let you go like this!’
‘Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I saw—what I ought to have seen sooner; and I won’t come.’
‘Then good-morning, my four months’ cousin—good-bye!’
He leapt up lightly, arranged the reins, and was gone between the tall red-berried hedges.
Tess did not look after him, but slowly wound along the crooked lane. It was still early, and though the sun’s lower limb was just free of the hill his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane.
As she walked, however, some footsteps approached behind her, the footsteps of a man; and owing to the briskness of his advance he was close at her heels and had said ‘Good-morning’ before she had been long aware of his propinquity. He appeared to be an artisan of
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