The gabled brick, tile, and
freestone houses had almost dried off for the season their integument
of lichen, the streams in the meadows were low, and in the sloping
High Street, from the West Gateway to the mediaeval cross, and from
the mediaeval cross to the bridge, that leisurely dusting and sweeping
was in progress which usually ushers in an old-fashioned market-day.
From the western gate aforesaid the highway, as every Wintoncestrian
knows, ascends a long and regular incline of the exact length of a
measured mile, leaving the houses gradually behind. Up this road
from the precincts of the city two persons were walking rapidly,
as if unconscious of the trying ascent--unconscious through
preoccupation and not through buoyancy. They had emerged upon this
road through a narrow, barred wicket in a high wall a little lower
down. They seemed anxious to get out of the sight of the houses and
of their kind, and this road appeared to offer the quickest means
of doing so. Though they were young, they walked with bowed heads,
which gait of grief the sun's rays smiled on pitilessly.
One of the pair was Angel Clare, the other a tall budding
creature--half girl, half woman--a spiritualized image of Tess,
slighter than she, but with the same beautiful eyes--Clare's
sister-in-law, 'Liza-Lu.
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