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‘The baby died.’

‘But the man?’

‘He is alive.’

A last despair passed over Clare’s face.

‘Is he in England?’

‘Yes.’

He took a few steps in a circle.

‘My position—is this,’ he said abruptly. ‘I thought—any man would have thought—that by giving up all ambition to win a wife with social standing, with fortune, with knowledge of the world, I should secure rustic unsophistication as surely as I should secure pink cheeks; but———However, I am no man to reproach you, and I will not.’

Tess felt his position so entirely that the remainder had not been needed. Therein lay just the distress of it; she saw that he had lost all round.

‘Angel—I should not have let it go on to marriage with ’ee if I had not known that, after all, there was a last way out of it for you; though I hoped you would never——’

Her voice grew husky.

‘A last way?’