cloth, which was sometimes used to keep the sun
off the milk-cans. Tess held it from slipping off him as well as
herself, Clare's hands being occupied.

"Now we are all right again. Ah--no we are not! It runs down into
my neck a little, and it must still more into yours. That's better.
Your arms are like wet marble, Tess. Wipe them in the cloth. Now,
if you stay quiet, you will not get another drop. Well, dear--about
that question of mine--that long-standing question?"

The only reply that he could hear for a little while was the smack of
the horse's hoofs on the moistening road, and the cluck of the milk
in the cans behind them.

"Do you remember what you said?"

"I do," she replied.

"Before we get home, mind."

"I'll try."

He said no more then. As they drove on, the fragment of an old manor
house of Caroline date rose against the sky, and was in due course
passed and left behind.

"That," he observed, to entertain her, "is an interesting old
place--one of the several seats which belonged to an ancient Norman
family formerly of great influence in this county, the d'Urbervilles.
I never pass one of their residences without thinking of them. There
is something very sad in the extinction of a family of renown, even
if it was fierce, domineering, feudal renown."

"Yes," said Tess.

They crept along towards a point in the expanse of shade just at hand
at which a feeble light was beginning to assert its presence, a spot
where, by day, a fitful white streak of steam at intervals upon the
dark green background denoted intermittent moments of contact between
their secluded world and modern life. Modern life stretched out its
steam feeler to this point three or four times a day, touched the
native existences, and quickly withdrew its feeler again, as if what
it touched had been uncongenial.

They reached the feeble light, which came from the smoky lamp of a
little railway station; a poor enough terrestrial star, yet in one
sense of more importance to Talbothays Dairy and mankind than the
celestial ones to which it stood in such humiliating contrast. The
cans of new milk were unladen in the rain, Tess getting a little
shelter from a neighbouring holly tree.

Then there was the hissing of a train, which drew up almost silently
upon the wet rails, and the milk was rapidly swung can by can into
the truck. The light of the engine flashed for a second upon Tess
Durbeyfield's figure, motionless under the