She passed downstairs very quickly, never looking back at
him or saying another word. The other maids were already down,
and the subject was not pursued. Except Marian, they all looked
wistfully and suspiciously at the pair, in the sad yellow rays which
the morning candles emitted in contrast with the first cold signals
of the dawn without.
When skimming was done--which, as the milk diminished with the
approach of autumn, was a lessening process day by day--Retty and
the rest went out. The lovers followed them.
"Our tremulous lives are so different from theirs, are they not?" he
musingly observed to her, as he regarded the three figures tripping
before him through the frigid pallor of opening day.
"Not so very different, I think," she said.
"Why do you think that?"
"There are very few women's lives that are not--tremulous," Tess
replied, pausing over the new word as if it impressed her. "There's
more in those three than you think."
"What is in them?"
"Almost either of 'em," she began, "would make--perhaps would
make--a properer wife than I. And perhaps they love you as well
as I--almost."
"O, Tessy!"
There were signs that it was an exquisite relief to her to hear the
impatient exclamation, though she had resolved so intrepidly to let
generosity make one bid against herself.
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