He
now handed her a packet containing a fairly good sum of money, which
he had obtained from his bankers for the purpose. The brilliants,
the interest in which seemed to be Tess's for her life only (if he
understood the wording of the will), he advised her to let him send
to a bank for safety; and to this she readily agreed.
These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to the carriage,
and handed her in. The coachman was paid and told where to drive
her. Taking next his own bag and umbrella--the sole articles he had
brought with him hitherwards--he bade her goodbye; and they parted
there and then.
The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched it go with an
unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one
moment. But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured
to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside. Thus he beheld her recede,
and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with
peculiar emendations of his own--
God's NOT in his heaven:
All's WRONG with the world!
When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his
own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.
XXXVIII
As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her
youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor.
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