t her hands. The mountain had
not yet been removed. She could not let him read it now, the house
being in full bustle of preparation; and descending to her own room
she destroyed the letter there.

She was so pale when he saw her again that he felt quite anxious.
The incident of the misplaced letter she had jumped at as if it
prevented a confession; but she knew in her conscience that it need
not; there was still time. Yet everything was in a stir; there
was coming and going; all had to dress, the dairyman and Mrs Crick
having been asked to accompany them as witnesses; and reflection or
deliberate talk was well-nigh impossible. The only minute Tess could
get to be alone with Clare was when they met upon the landing.

"I am so anxious to talk to you--I want to confess all my faults and
blunders!" she said with attempted lightness.

"No, no--we can't have faults talked of--you must be deemed perfect
to-day at least, my Sweet!" he cried. "We shall have plenty of time,
hereafter, I hope, to talk over our failings. I will confess mine at
the same time."

"But it would be better for me to do it now, I think, so that you
could not say--"

"Well, my quixotic one, you shall tell me anything--say, as soon as
we are settled in our lodging; not now. I, too, will tell you my
faults then. But do not let us spoil the day with them; they will
be excellent matter for a dull time."

"Then you don't wish me to, dearest?"

"I do not, Tessy, really."

The hurry of dressing and starting left no time for more than this.
Those words of his seemed to reassure her on further reflection.
She was whirled onward through the next couple of critical hours by
the mastering tide of her devotion to him, which closed up further
meditation. Her one desire, so long resisted, to make herself his,
to call him her lord, her own--then, if necessary, to die--had
at last lifted her up from her plodding reflective pathway. In
dressing, she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured
idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its
brightness.

The church was a long way off, and they were obliged to drive,
particularly as it was winter. A closed carriage was ordered from
a roadside inn, a vehicle which had been kept there ever since the
old days of post-chaise travelling. It had stout wheel-spokes, and
heavy felloes a great curved bed, immense straps and springs, and a
pole like a battering-ram. The postilion was a venerabl