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TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

there came into her head her mother’s ballad of the mystic robe—


That never would become that wife
That had once done amiss,


which Mrs. Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely and so archly, her foot on the cradle, which she rocked to the tune. Suppose this robe should betray her by changing colour, as her robe had betrayed Queen Guénever. Since she had been at the dairy she had not once thought of the lines till now.

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