Angel, suddenly recollecting that Tess was overhearing this gloomy tale, went to shut the door between the passage and the ante-room to the inner parlour where she was; but his wife, flinging a shawl round her, had come to the outer room and was listening to the man’s narrative, her eyes resting absently on the luggage and the drops of rain glistening upon it.

“And, more than this, there’s Marian; she’s been found dead drunk by the withy-bed—­a girl who hev never been known to touch anything before except shilling ale; though, to be sure, ’a was always a good trencher-woman, as her face showed.  It seems as if the maids had all gone out o’ their minds!”

“And Izz?” asked Tess.

“Izz is about house as usual; but ’a do say ’a can guess how it happened; and she seems to be very low in mind about it, poor maid, as well she mid be.  And so you see, sir, as all this happened just when we was packing your few traps and your Mis’ess’s night-rail and dressing things into the cart, why, it belated me.”

“Yes.  Well, Jonathan, will you get the trunks upstairs, and drink a cup of ale, and hasten back as soon as you can, in case you should be wanted?”

Tess had gone back to the inner parlour, and sat down by the fire, looking wistfully into it.  She heard Jonathan Kail’s heavy footsteps up and down the stairs till he had done placing the luggage, and heard him express his thanks for the ale her husband took out to him, and for the gratuity he received.  Jonathan’s footsteps then died from the door, and his cart creaked away.

Angel slid forward the massive oak bar which secured the door, and coming in to where she sat over the hearth, pressed her cheeks between his hands from behind.  He expected her to jump up gaily and unpack the toilet-gear that she had been so anxious about, but as she did not rise he sat down with her in the firelight, the candles on the supper-table being too thin and glimmering to interfere with its glow.

“I am so sorry you should have heard this sad story about the girls,” he said.  “Still, don’t let it depress you.  Retty was naturally morbid, you know.”

“Without the least cause,” said Tess.  “While they who have cause to be, hide it, and pretend they are not.”

This incident had turned the scale for her.  They were simple and innocent girls on whom the unhappiness of unrequited love had fallen; they had deserved better at the hands of Fate.  She had deserved worse—­yet she was the chosen one.  It was wicked of her to take all without paying.  She would pay to the uttermost farthing; she would tell, there and then.  This final determination she came to when she looked into the fire, he holding her hand.

A steady glare from the now flameless embers painted the sides and back of the fireplace with its colour, and the well-polished andirons, and the old brass tongs that would not meet.  The underside of the mantel-shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs of the table nearest the fire.  Tess’s face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius—­a constellation of white, red, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues with her every pulsation.