She clasped his neck, and for the first time Clare learnt what an impassioned woman’s kisses were like upon the lips of one whom she loved with all her heart and soul, as Tess loved him.

“There—­now do you believe?” she asked, flushed, and wiping her eyes.

“Yes.  I never really doubted—­never, never!”

So they drove on through the gloom, forming one bundle inside the sail-cloth, the horse going as he would, and the rain driving against them.  She had consented.  She might as well have agreed at first.  The “appetite for joy” which pervades all creation, that tremendous force which sways humanity to its purpose, as the tide sways the helpless weed, was not to be controlled by vague lucubrations over the social rubric.

“I must write to my mother,” she said.  “You don’t mind my doing that?”

“Of course not, dear child.  You are a child to me, Tess, not to know how very proper it is to write to your mother at such a time, and how wrong it would be in me to object.  Where does she live?”

“At the same place—­Marlott.  On the further side of Blackmoor Vale.”

“Ah, then I HAVE seen you before this summer—­”

“Yes; at that dance on the green; but you would not dance with me.  O, I hope that is of no ill-omen for us now!”

XXXI

Tess wrote a most touching and urgent letter to her mother the very next day, and by the end of the week a response to her communication arrived in Joan Durbeyfield’s wandering last-century hand.

   DEAR TESS,—­

J write these few lines Hoping they will find you well, as they leave me at Present, thank God for it.  Dear Tess, we are all glad to Hear that you are going really to be married soon.  But with respect to your question, Tess, J say between ourselves, quite private but very strong, that on no account do you say a word of your Bygone Trouble to him.  J did not tell everything to your Father, he being so Proud on account of his Respectability, which, perhaps, your Intended is the same.  Many a woman—­some of the Highest in the Land—­have had a Trouble in their time; and why should you Trumpet yours when others don’t Trumpet theirs?  No girl would be such a Fool, specially as it is so long ago, and not your Fault at all.  J shall answer the same if you ask me fifty times.  Besides, you must bear in mind that, knowing it to be your Childish Nature to tell all that’s in your heart—­so simple!—­J made you promise me never to let it out by Word or Deed, having your Welfare in my Mind; and you most solemnly did promise it going from this Door.  J have not named either that Question or your coming marriage to your Father, as he would blab it everywhere, poor Simple Man.

Dear Tess, keep up your Spirits, and we mean to send you a Hogshead of Cyder for you Wedding, knowing there is not much in your parts, and thin Sour Stuff what there is.  So no more at present, and with kind love to your Young Man.—­From your affectte.  Mother,

   J. DURBEYFIELD