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As soon as Clare had taken the reins from the ostler, and the young couple had driven off, the two men went in the other direction.

‘And was it a mistake?’ said the second one.

‘Not a bit of it. But I didn’t want to hurt the gentleman’s feelings—not I.’

In the meantime the lovers were driving onward.

‘Could we put off our wedding till a little later?’ Tess asked, in a dry dull voice. ‘I mean, if we wished?’

‘No, my love. Calm yourself. Do you mean that the fellow may have time to summon me for assault?’ he asked good-humouredly.

‘No—I only meant—if it should have to be put off.’

What she meant was not very clear, and he directed her to dismiss such fancies from her mind, which she obediently did as well as she could. But she was grave, very grave, all the way home; till she thought, ‘We shall go away, a very long distance, hundreds of miles from these parts, and such as this can never happen again, and no ghost of the past reach there.’

They parted tenderly that night on the land-