Tess did not speak to her fellow-worker, nor did he speak to her.
Nor did she think of him further than to recollect that he had not
been there when it was broad daylight, and that she did not know
him as any one of the Marlott labourers, which was no wonder, her
absences having been so long and frequent of late years. By-and-by
he dug so close to her that the fire-beams were reflected as
distinctly from the steel prongs of his fork as from her own. On
going up to the fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she
found that he did the same on the other side. The fire flared up,
and she beheld the face of d'Urberville.
The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness of his
appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was now worn only by the
most old-fashioned of the labourers, had a ghastly comicality that
chilled her as to its bearing. D'Urberville emitted a low, long
laugh.
"If I were inclined to joke, I should say, How much this seems like
Paradise!" he remarked whimsically, looking at her with an inclined
head.
"What do you say?" she weakly asked.
"A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I
am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior
animal.
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