"Oh--you have heard the legend of the d'Urberville Coach--that

well-known superstition of this county about your family when they

were very popular here; and this lumbering old thing reminds you of

it." "I have never heard of it to my knowledge," said she. "What is the

legend--may I know it?" "Well--I would rather not tell it in detail just now. A certain

d'Urberville of the sixteenth or seventeenth century committed a

dreadful crime in his family coach; and since that time members of

the family see or hear the old coach whenever--But I'll tell you

another day--it is rather gloomy. Evidently some dim knowledge of

it has been brought back to your mind by the sight of this venerable

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caravan." "I don't remember hearing it before," she murmured. "Is it when we

are going to die, Angel, that members of my family see it, or is it

when we have committed a crime?" "Now, Tess!"

He silenced her by a kiss. By the time they reached home she was contrite and spiritless. She

was Mrs Angel Clare, indeed, but had she any moral right to the name?

Was she not more truly Mrs Alexander d'Urberville? Could intensity

of love justify what might be considered in upright souls as culpable

reticence? She knew not what was expected of women in such cases;

and she had no counsellor. However, when she found herself alone in her room for a few

minutes--the last day this on which she was ever to enter it--she

knelt down and prayed. She tried to pray to God, but it was her

husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man

was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was

conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Laurence: "These violent

delights have violent ends." It might be too desperate for human

conditions--too rank, to wild, too deadly.

"O my love, why do I love you so!" she whispered there alone; "for

she you love is not my real self, but one in my image; the one I

might have been!" Afternoon came, and with it the hour for departure. They had decided

to fulfil the plan of going for a few days to the lodgings in the old

farmhouse near Wellbridge Mill, at which he meant to reside during

his investigation of flour processes. At two o'clock there was

nothing left to do but to start. All the servantry of the dairy were

standing in the red-brick entry to see them go out, the dairyman and

his wife following to the door. Tess saw her three chamber-mates

in a row against the wall, pensively inclining their heads. She

had much questioned if they would appear at the parting moment; but

there they were, stoical and staunch to the last. She knew why the

delicate Retty looked so fragile, and Izz so tragically sorrowful,

and Marian so blank; and she forgot her own dogging shadow for a

moment in contemplating theirs. She impulsively whispered to him-




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