`Ah, is it so! - . That's sad, Tess!'

`Yes.'

`But to stay away from you - to leave you to work like this!'

`He does not leave me to work!' she cried, springing to the defence of the absent one with all her fervour. `He don't know it! It is by my own arrangement.'

`Then, does he write?'

`I - I cannot tell you. There are things which are private to ourselves.'

`Of course that means that he does not. You are a deserted wife, my fair Tess!'

In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the buff-glove was on it, and he seized only the rough leather fingers which did not express the life or shape of those within.

`You must not - you must not!' she cried fearfully, slipping her hand from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp. `O, will you go away - for the sake of me and my husband - go, in the name of your own Christianity!'

`Yes, yes; I will,' he said abruptly, and thrusting the glove back to her turned to leave. Facing round, however, he said, `Tess, as God is my judge, I meant no humbug in taking your hand!'

A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which they had not noticed in their preoccupation, ceased close behind them; and a voice reached her ear:

`What the devil are you doing away from your work at this time o' day?'

Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the distance, and had inquisitively ridden across, to learn what was their business in his field.

`Don't speak like that to her!' said d'Urberville, his face blackening with something that was not Christianity.

`Indeed, Mister! And what mid Methodist parsons have to do with she?'

`Who is the fellow?' asked d'Urberville, turning to Tess.

She went close up to him.

`Go - I do beg you!' she said.

`What! And leave you to that tyrant? I can see in his face what a churl he is.'

`He won't hurt me. He's not in love with me. I can leave at Lady-Day.'

`Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose. But - well, good-bye!'

Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant, having reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued his reprimand, which Tess took with the greatest coolness, that sort of attack being independent of sex. To have as a master this man of stone, who would have cuffed her if he had dared, was almost a relief after her former experiences. She silently walked back towards the summit of the field that was the scene of her labour, so absorbed in the interview which had Just taken place that she was hardly aware that the nose of Groby's horse almost touched her shoulders.