She had come to Talbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could
she agree to a step which might afterwards cause bitter rueing to her
husband for his blindness in wedding her. And she held that what her
conscience had decided for her when her mind was unbiassed ought not
to be overruled now.
"Why don't somebody tell him all about me?" she said. "It was only
forty miles off--why hasn't it reached here? Somebody must know!"
Yet nobody seemed to know; nobody told him.
For two or three days no more was said. She guessed from the sad
countenances of her chamber companions that they regarded her not
only as the favourite, but as the chosen; but they could see for
themselves that she did not put herself in his way.
Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life
was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and
positive pain. At the next cheese-making the pair were again left
alone together. The dairyman himself had been lending a hand; but
Mr Crick, as well as his wife, seemed latterly to have acquired a
suspicion of mutual interest between these two; though they walked
so circumspectly that suspicion was but of the faintest. Anyhow, the
dairyman left them to themselves.
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