“And you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentleman?”

“O Aby, don’t—­don’t talk of that any more!”

Left to his reflections Abraham soon grew drowsy.  Tess was not skilful in the management of a horse, but she thought that she could take upon herself the entire conduct of the load for the present and allow Abraham to go to sleep if he wished to do so.  She made him a sort of nest in front of the hives, in such a manner that he could not fall, and, taking the reins into her own hands, jogged on as before.

Prince required but slight attention, lacking energy for superfluous movements of any sort.  With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning against the hives.  The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality, and the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time.

Then, examining the mesh of events in her own life, she seemed to see the vanity of her father’s pride; the gentlemanly suitor awaiting herself in her mother’s fancy; to see him as a grimacing personage, laughing at her poverty and her shrouded knightly ancestry.  Everything grew more and more extravagant, and she no longer knew how time passed.  A sudden jerk shook her in her seat, and Tess awoke from the sleep into which she, too, had fallen.

They were a long way further on than when she had lost consciousness, and the waggon had stopped.  A hollow groan, unlike anything she had ever heard in her life, came from the front, followed by a shout of “Hoi there!”

The lantern hanging at her waggon had gone out, but another was shining in her face—­much brighter than her own had been.  Something terrible had happened.  The harness was entangled with an object which blocked the way.

In consternation Tess jumped down, and discovered the dreadful truth.  The groan had proceeded from her father’s poor horse Prince.  The morning mail-cart, with its two noiseless wheels, speeding along these lanes like an arrow, as it always did, had driven into her slow and unlighted equipage.  The pointed shaft of the cart had entered the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his life’s blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss into the road.

In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole, with the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops.  Then she stood helplessly looking on.  Prince also stood firm and motionless as long as he could; till he suddenly sank down in a heap.

By this time the mail-cart man had joined her, and began dragging and unharnessing the hot form of Prince.  But he was already dead, and, seeing that nothing more could be done immediately, the mail-cart man returned to his own animal, which was uninjured.