much without previous information if she had waited a moment, for one of the brothers proceeded to say: “Ah! poor Angel, poor Angel! I never see that nice girl without more and more regretting his precipitancy in throwing himself away upon a dairymaid, or whatever she may be. It is a queer business, apparently. Whether she has joined him yet or not I don’t know; but she had not done so some months ago when I heard from him.”
“I can’t say. He never tells me anything nowadays. His ill-considered marriage seems to have completed that estrangement from me which was begun by his extraordinary opinions.”
Tess beat up the long hill still faster; but she could not outwalk them without exciting notice. At last they outsped her altogether, and passed her by. The young lady still further ahead heard their footsteps and turned. Then there was a greeting and a shaking of hands, and the three went on together.
They soon reached the summit of the hill, and, evidently intending this point to be the limit of their promenade, slackened pace and turned all three aside to the gate whereat Tess had paused an hour before that time to reconnoitre the town before descending into it. During their discourse one of the clerical brothers probed the hedge carefully with his umbrella, and dragged something to light.
“Here’s a pair of old boots,” he said. “Thrown away, I suppose, by some tramp or other.”
“Some imposter who wished to come into the town barefoot, perhaps, and so excite our sympathies,” said Miss Chant. “Yes, it must have been, for they are excellent walking-boots—by no means worn out. What a wicked thing to do! I’ll carry them home for some poor person.”
Cuthbert Clare, who had been the one to find them, picked them up for her with the crook of his stick; and Tess’s boots were appropriated.