a habitation conjointly, the first meal together, the chatting by the fire with joined hands.
The farmer and his wife were in the field at the moment of his visit, and Clare was in the rooms alone for some time. Inwardly swollen with a renewal of sentiment that he had not quite reckoned with, he went upstairs to her chamber, which had never been his. The bed was smooth as she had made it with her own hands on the morning of leaving. The mistletoe hung under the tester just as he had placed it. Having been there three or four weeks it was turning colour, and the leaves and berries were wrinkled. Angel took it down and crushed it into the grate. Standing there, he for the first time doubted whether his course in this conjecture had been a wise, much less a generous, one. But had he not been cruelly blinded? In the incoherent multitude of his emotions he knelt down at the bedside wet-eyed. “O Tess! If you had only told me sooner, I would have forgiven you!” he mourned.
Hearing a footstep below, he rose and went to the top of the stairs. At the bottom of the flight he saw a woman standing, and on her turning up her face recognized the pale, dark-eyed Izz Huett.
“ Mr. Clare,” she said, “I’ve called to see you and Mrs. Clare, and to inquire if ye be well. I thought you might be back here again.”
This was a girl whose secret he had guessed, but who had not yet guessed his; an honest girl who loved him—one who would have made as good, or nearly as good, a practical farmer’s wife as Tess.
“I am here alone,” he said; “we are not living here now.” Explaining why he had come, he asked, “Which way are you going home, Izz?”
“I have no home at Talbothays Dairy now, sir,” she said.
“Why is that?”
Izz looked down.