But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she
thought, "We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles
from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no
ghost of the past reach there."
They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest
the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she
sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping
and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her
anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door,
and asked him what was the matter.
"Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within. "I am so sorry I disturbed
you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and
dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you,
and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am
occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and
think of it no more."
This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her
indecision. Declare the past to him by word of mouth she could not;
but there was another way.
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