She turned, and desperately resumed her digging, tears dripping upon the fork-handle and upon the clods.

`About the children - your brothers and sisters,' he resumed. `I've been thinking of them.'

Tess's heart quivered - he was touching her in a weak place. He had divined her chief anxiety. Since returning home her soul had gone out to those children with an affection that was passionate.

`If your mother does not recover, somebody ought to do something for them; since your father will not be able to do much, I suppose?'

`He can with my assistance. He must!'

`And with mine.'

`No, sir!'

`How damned foolish this is!' burst out d'Urberville. `Why, he thinks we are the same family; and will be quite satisfied!'

`He don't. I've undeceived him.'

`The more fool you!'

D'Urberville in anger retreated from her to the hedge, where he pulled off the long smockfrock which had disguised him; and rolling it up and pushing it into the couch-fire, went away.

Tess could not get on with her digging after this; she felt restless; she wondered if he had gone back to her father's house; and taking the fork in her hand proceeded homewards.

Some twenty yards from the house she was met by one of her sisters.

`O, Tessy - what do you think! 'Liza-Lu is a-crying, and there's a lot of folk in the house, and mother is a good deal better, but they think father is dead!'

The child realized the grandeur of the news; but not as yet its sadness; and stood looking at Tess with round-eyed importance, till, beholding the effect produced upon her, she said

`What, Tess, shan't we talk to father never no more?'

`But father was only a little bit ill!' exclaimed Tess distractedly.

'Liza-Lu came up.

`He dropped down just now, and the doctor who was there for mother said there was no chance for him, because his heart was growed in.'

Yes; the Durbeyfield couple had changed places; the dying one was out of danger, and the indisposed one was dead. The news meant even more than it sounded. Her father's life had a value apart from his personal achievements, or perhaps it would not have had much. It was the last of the three lives for whose duration the house and premises were held under a lease; and it had long been coveted by the tenant-farmer for his regular labourers, who were stinted in cottage accommodation. Moreover, `leviers' were disapproved of in villages almost as much as little freeholders, because of their independence of manner, and when a lease determined it was never renewed.

Thus the Durbeyfields, once d'Urbervilles, saw descending upon them the destiny which, no doubt, when they were among the Olympians of the county, they had caused to descend many a time, and severely