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 that way that she might not think he had yielded to an impulse of which his head would disapprove.
She turned quite careworn. 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.
“O Mr. Clare—I cannot be your wife—I cannot be!”
The sound of her own decision seemed to break Tess’s very heart, and she bowed her face in her grief.
“But, Tess!” he said, amazed at her reply, and holding her still more greedily close. “Do you say no? Surely you love me?”
“O yes, yes! And I would rather be yours than anybody’s in the world,” returned the sweet and honest voice of the distressed girl. “But I cannot marry you!”
“Tess,” he said, holding her at arm’s length, “you are engaged to marry someone else!”
“No, no!”
“Then why do you refuse me?”
“I don’t want to marry! I have not thought of doing it. I cannot! I only want to love you.”