“Well, it is convenient—you have admitted that.” He put his finger upon her cheek. “Ah!” he said.
“What?”
“I feel the red rising up at her having been caught! But why should I trifle so! We will not trifle—life is too serious.”
“It is. Perhaps I saw that before you did.”
She was seeing it then. To decline to marry him after all—in obedience to her emotion of last night—and leave the dairy, meant to go to some strange place, not a dairy; for milkmaids were not in request now calving-time was coming on; to go to some arable farm where no divine being like Angel Clare was. She hated the thought, and she hated more the thought of going home.
“So that, seriously, dearest Tess,” he continued, “since you will probably have to leave at Christmas, it is in every way desirable and convenient that I should carry you off then as my property. Besides, if you were not the most uncalculating girl in the world you would know that we could not go on like this forever.”
“I wish we could. That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!”
“I always shall.”
“O, I know you will!” she cried, with a sudden fervour of faith in him. “Angel, I will fix the day when I will become yours for always!”
Thus at last it was arranged between them, during that dark walk home, amid the myriads of liquid voices on the right and left.