nding their banks where trodden down by the cows.
The shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the river
when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an essence of soils,
pounded champaigns of the past, steeped, refined, and subtilized to
extraordinary richness, out of which came all the fertility of the
mead, and of the cattle grazing there.

Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of these
watermen, with the air of a man who was accustomed to public
dalliance, though actually as shy as she who, with lips parted and
eyes askance on the labourers, wore the look of a wary animal the
while.

"You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before them!" she said
gladly.

"O no!"

"But if it should reach the ears of your friends at Emminster that
you are walking about like this with me, a milkmaid--"

"The most bewitching milkmaid ever seen."

"They might feel it a hurt to their dignity."

"My dear girl--a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare! It is a
grand card to play--that of your belonging to such a family, and I
am reserving it for a grand effect when we are married, and have
the proofs of your descent from Parson Tringham. Apart from that,
my future is to be totally foreign to my family--it will not affect
even the surface of their lives. We shall leave this part of
England--perhaps England itself--and what does it matter how people
regard us here? You will like going, will you not?"

She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so great was the
emotion aroused in her at the thought of going through the world with
him as his own familiar friend. Her feelings almost filled her ears
like a babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put her hand
in his, and thus they went on, to a place where the reflected sun
glared up from the river, under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow
that dazzled their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the
bridge. They stood still, whereupon little furred and feathered
heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water; but, finding
that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by, they
disappeared again. Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog
began to close round them--which was very early in the evening at
this time of the year--settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it
rested like crystals, and on his brows and hair.

They walked later on Sundays, when it was quite dark. Some of the
dairy-people, who we