Benvill Lane soon stretched before him, its hedges and trees purple
with buds; but he was looking at other things, and only recalled
himself to the scene sufficiently to enable him to keep the way. In
something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of
the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of
Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by
Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange
oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again. The pale and
blasted nettle-stems of the preceding year even now lingered nakedly
in the banks, young green nettles of the present spring growing from
their roots.
Thence he went along the verge of the upland overhanging the other
Hintocks, and, turning to the right, plunged into the bracing
calcareous region of Flintcomb-Ash, the address from which she had
written to him in one of the letters, and which he supposed to be
the place of sojourn referred to by her mother. Here, of course, he
did not find her; and what added to his depression was the discovery
that no "Mrs Clare" had ever been heard of by the cottagers or by
the farmer himself, though Tess was remembered well enough by her
Christian name.
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