re of defence. But
his opponent began to think better of the matter. He looked anew at
Tess as he passed her, and said to Clare--

"I beg pardon, sir; 'twas a complete mistake. I thought she was
another woman, forty miles from here."

Clare, feeling then that he had been too hasty, and that he was,
moreover, to blame for leaving her standing in an inn-passage, did
what he usually did in such cases, gave the man five shillings to
plaster the blow; and thus they parted, bidding each other a pacific
good night. As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler,
and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other
direction.

"And was it a mistake?" said the second one.

"Not a bit of it. But I didn't want to hurt the gentleman's
feelings--not I."

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

"Could we put off our wedding till a little later?" Tess asked in a
dry dull voice. "I mean if we wished?"

"No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have
time to summon me for assault?" he asked good-humouredly.

"No--I only meant--if it should have to be put off."

What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss
such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she
could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she
thought, "We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles
from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no
ghost of the past reach there."

They parted tenderly that night on the landing, and Clare ascended to
his attic. Tess sat up getting on with some little requisites, lest
the few remaining days should not afford sufficient time. While she
sat she heard a noise in Angel's room overhead, a sound of thumping
and struggling. Everybody else in the house was asleep, and in her
anxiety lest Clare should be ill she ran up and knocked at his door,
and asked him what was the matter.

"Oh, nothing, dear," he said from within. "I am so sorry I disturbed
you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and
dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you,
and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at
my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am
occasionally liable to these freaks in my sleep. Go to bed and
think of it no more."

This was the last drachm required to turn the scale of her
indecision. Declare the past to him by word o