ase, Tessy, I will give you time," he
said. "It was very abrupt to come home and speak to you all at once.
I'll not allude to it again for a while."

She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath the pump, and
began anew. But she could not, as at other times, hit the exact
under-surface of the cream with the delicate dexterity required, try
as she might; sometimes she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes
in the air. She could hardly see, her eyes having filled with two
blurring tears drawn forth by a grief which, to this her best friend
and dear advocate, she could never explain.

"I can't skim--I can't!" she said, turning away from him.

Not to agitate and hinder her longer, the considerate Clare began
talking in a more general way:

You quite misapprehend my parents. They are the most simple-mannered
people alive, and quite unambitious. They are two of the few
remaining Evangelical school. Tessy, are you an Evangelical?"

"I don't know."

"You go to church very regularly, and our parson here is not very
High, they tell me."

Tess's ideas on the views of the parish clergyman, whom she heard
every week, seemed to be rather more vague than Clare's, who had
never heard him at all.

"I wish I could fix my mind on what I hear there more firmly than I
do," she remarked as a safe generality. "It is often a great sorrow
to me."

She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was sure in his heart that his
father could not object to her on religious grounds, even though she
did not know whether her principles were High, Low or Broad. He
himself knew that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she held,
apparently imbibed in childhood, were, if anything, Tractarian as to
phraseology, and Pantheistic as to essence. Confused or otherwise,
to disturb them was his last desire:

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views;
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days.

He had occasionally thought the counsel less honest than musical; but
he gladly conformed to it now.

He spoke further of the incidents of his visit, of his father's mode
of life, of his zeal for his principles; she grew serener, and the
undulations disappeared from her skimming; as she finished one lead
after another he followed her, and drew the plugs for letting down
the milk.

"I fancied you looked a little downcast when you came in," she
venture