e larder, and Clare
soon had breakfast laid, his experiences at the dairy having rendered
him facile in domestic preparations. The smoke of the kindled wood
rose from the chimney without like a lotus-headed column; local
people who were passing by saw it, and thought of the newly-married
couple, and envied their happiness.

Angel cast a final glance round, and then going to the foot of the
stairs, called in a conventional voice--

"Breakfast is ready!"

He opened the front door, and took a few steps in the morning air.
When, after a short space, he came back she was already in the
sitting-room mechanically readjusting the breakfast things. As she
was fully attired, and the interval since his calling her had been
but two or three minutes, she must have been dressed or nearly so
before he went to summon her. Her hair was twisted up in a large
round mass at the back of her head, and she had put on one of the
new frocks--a pale blue woollen garment with neck-frillings of
white. Her hands and face appeared to be cold, and she had possibly
been sitting dressed in the bedroom a long time without any fire.
The marked civility of Clare's tone in calling her seemed to have
inspired her, for the moment, with a new glimmer of hope. But it
soon died when she looked at him.

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the
hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed
as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any
more.

He spoke gently to her, and she replied with a like
undemonstrativeness. At last she came up to him, looking in his
sharply-defined face as one who had no consciousness that her own
formed a visible object also.

"Angel!" she said, and paused, touching him with her fingers lightly
as a breeze, as though she could hardly believe to be there in the
flesh the man who was once her lover. Her eyes were bright, her pale
cheek still showed its wonted roundness, though half-dried tears had
left glistening traces thereon; and the usually ripe red mouth was
almost as pale as her cheek. Throbbingly alive as she was still,
under the stress of her mental grief the life beat so brokenly that
a little further pull upon it would cause real illness, dull her
characteristic eyes, and make her mouth thin.

She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had
set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance that he gazed
at her with