great holly tree. No
object could have looked more foreign to the gleaming cranks and
wheels than this unsophisticated girl, with the round bare arms, the
rainy face and hair, the suspended attitude of a friendly leopard at
pause, the print gown of no date or fashion, and the cotton bonnet
drooping on her brow.

She mounted again beside her lover, with a mute obedience
characteristic of impassioned natures at times, and when they had
wrapped themselves up over head and ears in the sailcloth again, they
plunged back into the now thick night. Tess was so receptive that
the few minutes of contact with the whirl of material progress
lingered in her thought.

"Londoners will drink it at their breakfasts to-morrow, won't they?"
she asked. "Strange people that we have never seen."

"Yes--I suppose they will. Though not as we send it. When its
strength has been lowered, so that it may not get up into their
heads."

"Noble men and noble women, ambassadors and centurions, ladies and
tradeswomen, and babies who have never seen a cow."

"Well, yes; perhaps; particularly centurions."

"Who don't know anything of us, and where it comes from; or think how
we two drove miles across the moor to-night in the rain that it might
reach 'em in time?"

"We did not drive entirely on account of these precious Londoners; we
drove a little on our own--on account of that anxious matter which
you will, I am sure, set at rest, dear Tess. Now, permit me to put
it in this way. You belong to me already, you know; your heart, I
mean. Does it not?"

"You know as well as I. O yes--yes!"

"Then, if your heart does, why not your hand?"

"My only reason was on account of you--on account of a question. I
have something to tell you--"

"But suppose it to be entirely for my happiness, and my worldly
convenience also?"

"O yes; if it is for your happiness and worldly convenience. But my
life before I came here--I want--"

"Well, it is for my convenience as well as my happiness. If I have a
very large farm, either English or colonial, you will be invaluable
as a wife to me; better than a woman out of the largest mansion in
the country. So please--please, dear Tessy, disabuse your mind of
the feeling that you will stand in my way."

"But my history. I want you to know it--you must let me tell
you--you will not like me so well!"

"Tell it if you wish to, dearest. This precious history then. Yes,
I was born at so and so, Anno Dom