"Creep close to me, and perhaps the drizzle
won't hurt you much. I should be sorrier still if I did not think
that the rain might be helping me."
She imperceptibly crept closer, and he wrapped round them both a
large piece of sail-cloth, which was sometimes used to keep the sun
off the milk-cans. Tess held it from slipping off him as well as
herself, Clare's hands being occupied.
"Now we are all right again. Ah--no we are not! It runs down into
my neck a little, and it must still more into yours. That's better.
Your arms are like wet marble, Tess. Wipe them in the cloth. Now,
if you stay quiet, you will not get another drop. Well, dear--about
that question of mine--that long-standing question?"
The only reply that he could hear for a little while was the smack of
the horse's hoofs on the moistening road, and the cluck of the milk
in the cans behind them.
"Do you remember what you said?"
"I do," she replied.
"Before we get home, mind."
"I'll try."
He said no more then. As they drove on, the fragment of an old manor
house of Caroline date rose against the sky, and was in due course
passed and left behind.
"That," he observed, to entertain her, "is an interesting old
place--one of the several seats which belonged to an ancient Norman
family formerly of great influence in this county, the d'Urbervilles.
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