The flood of memories brought back by this revival of an incident anterior to her troubles produced a momentary dismay lest, recognizing her also, he should by some means discover her story.  But it passed away when she found no sign of remembrance in him.  She saw by degrees that since their first and only encounter his mobile face had grown more thoughtful, and had acquired a young man’s shapely moustache and beard—­the latter of the palest straw colour where it began upon his cheeks, and deepening to a warm brown farther from its root.  Under his linen milking-pinner he wore a dark velveteen jacket, cord breeches and gaiters, and a starched white shirt.  Without the milking-gear nobody could have guessed what he was.  He might with equal probability have been an eccentric landowner or a gentlemanly ploughman.  That he was but a novice at dairy work she had realized in a moment, from the time he had spent upon the milking of one cow.

Meanwhile many of the milkmaids had said to one another of the newcomer, “How pretty she is!” with something of real generosity and admiration, though with a half hope that the auditors would qualify the assertion—­which, strictly speaking, they might have done, prettiness being an inexact definition of what struck the eye in Tess.  When the milking was finished for the evening they straggled indoors, where Mrs Crick, the dairyman’s wife—­who was too respectable to go out milking herself, and wore a hot stuff gown in warm weather because the dairymaids wore prints—­was giving an eye to the leads and things.

Only two or three of the maids, Tess learnt, slept in the dairy-house besides herself, most of the helpers going to their homes.  She saw nothing at supper-time of the superior milker who had commented on the story, and asked no questions about him, the remainder of the evening being occupied in arranging her place in the bed-chamber.  It was a large room over the milk-house, some thirty feet long; the sleeping-cots of the other three indoor milkmaids being in the same apartment.  They were blooming young women, and, except one, rather older than herself.  By bedtime Tess was thoroughly tired, and fell asleep immediately.

But one of the girls, who occupied an adjoining bed, was more wakeful than Tess, and would insist upon relating to the latter various particulars of the homestead into which she had just entered.  The girl’s whispered words mingled with the shades, and, to Tess’s drowsy mind, they seemed to be generated by the darkness in which they floated.

“Mr Angel Clare—­he that is learning milking, and that plays the harp—­never says much to us.  He is a pa’son’s son, and is too much taken up wi’ his own thoughts to notice girls.  He is the dairyman’s pupil—­learning farming in all its branches.  He has learnt sheep-farming at another place, and he’s now mastering dairy-work....  Yes, he is quite the gentleman-born.  His father is the Reverent Mr Clare at Emminster—­a good many miles from here.”