ot at all."

"What!"

"I was mistaken."

"Oh, Arabella, Arabella; you be a deep one! Mistaken! well, that's
clever--it's a real stroke of genius! It is a thing I never thought
o', wi' all my experience! I never thought beyond bringing about the
real thing--not that one could sham it!"

"Don't you be too quick to cry sham! 'Twasn't sham. I didn't know."

"My word--won't he be in a taking! He'll give it to 'ee o' Saturday
nights! Whatever it was, he'll say it was a trick--a double one, by
the Lord!"

"I'll own to the first, but not to the second... Pooh--he won't
care! He'll be glad I was wrong in what I said. He'll shake down,
bless 'ee--men always do. What can 'em do otherwise? Married is
married."

Nevertheless it was with a little uneasiness that Arabella approached
the time when in the natural course of things she would have to
reveal that the alarm she had raised had been without foundation.
The occasion was one evening at bedtime, and they were in their
chamber in the lonely cottage by the wayside to which Jude walked
home from his work every day. He had worked hard the whole twelve
hours, and had retired to rest before his wife. When she came into
the room he was between sleeping and waking, and was barely conscious
of her undressing before the little looking-glass as he lay.

One action of hers, however, brought him to full cognition. Her face
being reflected towards him as she sat, he could perceive that she
was amusing herself by artificially producing in each cheek the
dimple before alluded to, a curious accomplishment of which she was
mistress, effecting it by a momentary suction. It seemed to him for
the first time that the dimples were far oftener absent from her face
during his intercourse with her nowadays than they had been in the
earlier weeks of their acquaintance.

"Don't do that, Arabella!" he said suddenly. "There is no harm in
it, but--I don't like to see you."

She turned and laughed. "Lord, I didn't know you were awake!" she
said. "How countrified you are! That's nothing."

"Where did you learn it?"

"Nowhere that I know of. They used to stay without any trouble when
I was at the public-house; but now they won't. My face was fatter
then."

"I don't care about dimples. I don't think they improve a
woman--particularly a married woman, and of full-sized figure like
you."

"Most men think otherwise."

"I don't care what most men think, if they do. How do y