Men were at work here and there--for it was the season for "taking

up" the meadows, or digging the little waterways clear for the winter

irrigation, and mending their banks where trodden down by the cows.

The shovelfuls of loam, black as jet, brought there by the river

when it was as wide as the whole valley, were an essence of soils,

pounded champaigns of the past, steeped, refined, and subtilized to

extraordinary richness, out of which came all the fertility of the

mead, and of the cattle grazing there. Clare hardily kept his arm round her waist in sight of these

watermen, with the air of a man who was accustomed to public

dalliance, though actually as shy as she who, with lips parted and

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eyes askance on the labourers, wore the look of a wary animal the

while. "You are not ashamed of owning me as yours before them!" she said

gladly. "O no!"

"But if it should reach the ears of your friends at Emminster that

you are walking about like this with me, a milkmaid--"

"The most bewitching milkmaid ever seen."

"They might feel it a hurt to their dignity."

"My dear girl--a d'Urberville hurt the dignity of a Clare! It is a

grand card to play--that of your belonging to such a family, and I

am reserving it for a grand effect when we are married, and have

the proofs of your descent from Parson Tringham. Apart from that,

my future is to be totally foreign to my family--it will not affect

even the surface of their lives. We shall leave this part of

England--perhaps England itself--and what does it matter how people

regard us here? You will like going, will you not?"

She could answer no more than a bare affirmative, so great was the

emotion aroused in her at the thought of going through the world with

him as his own familiar friend. Her feelings almost filled her ears

like a babble of waves, and surged up to her eyes. She put her hand

in his, and thus they went on, to a place where the reflected sun

glared up from the river, under a bridge, with a molten-metallic glow

that dazzled their eyes, though the sun itself was hidden by the

bridge. They stood still, whereupon little furred and feathered

heads popped up from the smooth surface of the water; but, finding

that the disturbing presences had paused, and not passed by, they

disappeared again. Upon this river-brink they lingered till the fog

began to close round them--which was very early in the evening at

this time of the year--settling on the lashes of her eyes, where it

rested like crystals, and on his brows and hair.




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