tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. At last, looking at his watch, he said, ‘Now, by the time you have had something to eat, it will be time for you to leave, if you want to catch the carrier to Shaston. Come here, and I’ll see what grub I can find.’
Stoke-D’Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman’s wish not to be disturbed in this pleasant tête-à-tête by the servantry.
‘Do you mind my smoking?’ he asked.
‘Oh, not at all, sir’
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there behind the blue narcotic haze sat the ‘tragic mischief’ of her drama—he who was to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec D'Urberville’s eyes to rivet themselves
75
