Meanwhile her husband's days had been by no means free from trial.
At this moment he was lying ill of fever in the clay lands near
Curitiba in Brazil, having been drenched with thunder-storms and
persecuted by other hardships, in common with all the English farmers
and farm-labourers who, just at this time, were deluded into going
thither by the promises of the Brazilian Government, and by the
baseless assumption that those frames which, ploughing and sowing on
English uplands, had resisted all the weathers to whose moods they
had been born, could resist equally well all the weathers by which
they were surprised on Brazilian plains.
To return. Thus it happened that when the last of Tess's sovereigns
had been spent she was unprovided with others to take their place,
while on account of the season she found it increasingly difficult
to get employment. Not being aware of the rarity of intelligence,
energy, health, and willingness in any sphere of life, she refrained
from seeking an indoor occupation; fearing towns, large houses,
people of means and social sophistication, and of manners other
than rural. From that direction of gentility Black Care had come.
Society might be better than she supposed from her slight experience
of it.
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