The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a
social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded
outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye
of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one
fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy--all this
imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and
sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed.
They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring
dripped monotonously downstairs.
"B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour later.
It was Izz Huett's voice.
Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty and Marian
suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and sighed--
"So be we!"
"I wonder what she is like--the lady they say his family have looked
out for him!"
"I wonder," said Izz.
"Some lady looked out for him?" gasped Tess, starting. "I have never
heard o' that!"
"O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank, chosen by his
family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter near his father's parish of
Emminster; he don't much care for her, they say. But he is sure to
marry her.
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