keeping with such a conjectured career in the
storing up of these showy ornaments for his wife and the wives of
her descendants. They gleamed somewhat ironically now. "Yet why?"
he asked himself. It was but a question of vanity throughout; and
if that were admitted into one side of the equation it should be
admitted into the other. His wife was a d'Urberville: whom could
they become better than her?

Suddenly he said with enthusiasm--

"Tess, put them on--put them on!" And he turned from the fire to
help her.

But as if by magic she had already donned them--necklace, ear-rings,
bracelets, and all.

"But the gown isn't right, Tess," said Clare. "It ought to be a low
one for a set of brilliants like that."

"Ought it?" said Tess.

"Yes," said he.

He suggested to her how to tuck in the upper edge of her bodice, so
as to make it roughly approximate to the cut for evening wear; and
when she had done this, and the pendant to the necklace hung isolated
amid the whiteness of her throat, as it was designed to do, he
stepped back to survey her.

"My heavens," said Clare, "how beautiful you are!"

As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but
very moderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple
condition and attire will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a
woman of fashion with the aids that Art can render; while the beauty
of the midnight crush would often cut but a sorry figure if placed
inside the field-woman's wrapper upon a monotonous acreage of
turnips on a dull day. He had never till now estimated the artistic
excellence of Tess's limbs and features.

"If you were only to appear in a ball-room!" he said. "But
no--no, dearest; I think I love you best in the wing-bonnet and
cotton-frock--yes, better than in this, well as you support these
dignities."

Tess's sense of her striking appearance had given her a flush of
excitement, which was yet not happiness.

"I'll take them off," she said, "in case Jonathan should see me.
They are not fit for me, are they? They must be sold, I suppose?"

"Let them stay a few minutes longer. Sell them? Never. It would be
a breach of faith."

Influenced by a second thought she readily obeyed. She had something
to tell, and there might be help in these. She sat down with the
jewels upon her; and they again indulged in conjectures as to where
Jonathan could possibly be with their baggage. The ale they had
poured out for