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 of the family see or hear the old coach whenever But I’ll tell you another day—it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable caravan.’

‘I don’t remember hearing it before,’ she murmured, ‘Is it when we are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it when we have committed a crime?’

‘Now Tess!’

He silenced her by a kiss.

By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She was Mrs. Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name? Was she not more truly Mrs. Alexander D’Urberville? Had intensity of love any power to justify what might possibly be considered in upright souls as culpable reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases; and she had no counsellor.

However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few minutes—the last day this on which she was ever to enter it—she knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication.