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 papers. She feared she was in the way, and, when the old woman was gone, retired to the kitchen, where she made herself busy as well as she could for more than an hour.

Clare’s shape appeared at the door.

‘You must not work like this,’ he said. ‘You are not my servant; you are my wife.’

She did not raise her eyes, but she brightened.

‘I may think myself that—indeed?’ she murmured, in piteous raillery. ‘You mean in name! Well, I don’t want to be anything more.’

‘You may think so, Tess! You are. What do you mean?

‘I don’t know,’ she said hastily, with tears in her glance. ‘I thought I—because I am not respectable, I mean. I told you I thought I was not respectable enough long ago—and I didn’t want to marry you, on that account—only you urged me!’

She broke into sobs, and turned her back to him. It would almost have won round any man but Angel Clare. Within the remote depths of his constitution, so gentle and affectionate as he was in general, there lay hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in a soft loam, which