Tess did not stop at Weatherbury, after this long drive, further than to make a slight nondescript meal at noon at a cottage to which the farmer recommended her. Thence she started on foot, basket in hand, to reach the wide upland of heath dividing this district from the low-lying meads of a farther valley in which the dairy stood that was the aim and end of her day’s pilgrimage.
Tess had never before visited this part of the country, and yet she felt akin to the landscape. Not so very far to the left of her she could discern a dark patch in the scenery, which inquiry confirmed her in supposing to be trees, marking the environs of Kingsbere—in the church of which parish the bones of her ancestors—her useless ancestors—lay entombed.
She had no admiration for them now; she almost hated them for the dance they had led her; not a thing of all that had been theirs did she retain but the old seal and spoon. ‘Pooh—I have as much of mother as father in me!’ she said. ‘All my prettiness comes from her, and she was only a dairymaid.’
The journey over the intervening uplands and
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