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‘O you little fool—you little fool!’ burst out Mrs. Durbeyfield, splashing Tess and herself in her agitation. ‘My heaven! that ever I should ha’ lived to say it, but I say it again, you little fool!’

Tess was convulsed with weeping, the tension of so many days having relaxed at last.

‘I know it—I know—I know!’ she gasped through her sobs. ‘But, O my mother, I could not help it! He was so good—and I felt the wickedness of trying to blind him as to what had happened! If—if—it were to be done again—I should do the same. I could not—I dared not—so sin—against him.’

‘But you sinned enough to marry him first!’

‘Yes, yes; that’s where my misery do lie! But I thought he could get rid of me by law if he were determined not to overlook it. And oh, if you knew—if you could only half know how I loved him—how anxious I was to have him—and how distressed I was between caring so much for him and my wish to be fair to him!’

Tess was so shaken that she could get