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 the leads to cut off the cream-edge he cleaned it in nature’s way; for the unconstrained manners of Talbothays dairy came convenient now.

‘I may as well say it now as later, dearest,’ he resumed gently. ‘I wish to ask you something of a very practical nature, which I have been thinking of ever since that day last week in the meads. I shall soon want to marry, and, being a farmer, you see I shall require for my wife a woman who knows all about the management of farms. Will you be that woman, Tessy?’

He put it in that way that she might not think he had yielded to an impulse of which his head would disapprove.

She turned quite pale. She had bowed to the inevitable result of proximity, the necessity of loving him; but she had not calculated upon this sudden corollary, which, indeed, Clare had put before her without quite meaning himself to do it so soon. With pain that was like the bitterness of dissolution she murmured the words of her indispensable and sworn answer as an honourable woman.

‘Oh, Mr. Clare—I cannot be your wife—I cannot be!’