On account of his long delay he started in a flying-run down the lane
westward, and had soon passed the hollow and mounted the next rise.
He had not yet overtaken his brothers, but he paused to get breath,
and looked back. He could see the white figures of the girls in the
green enclosure whirling about as they had whirled when he was among
them. They seemed to have quite forgotten him already.
All of them, except, perhaps, one. This white shape stood apart
by the hedge alone. From her position he knew it to be the pretty
maiden with whom he had not danced. Trifling as the matter was, he
yet instinctively felt that she was hurt by his oversight. He wished
that he had asked her; he wished that he had inquired her name. She
was so modest, so expressive, she had looked so soft in her thin
white gown that he felt he had acted stupidly.
However, it could not be helped, and turning, and bending himself to
a rapid walk, he dismissed the subject from his mind.
III
As for Tess Durbeyfield, she did not so easily dislodge the incident
from her consideration. She had no spirit to dance again for a long
time, though she might have had plenty of partners; but ah! they did
not speak so nicely as the strange young man had done. It was not
till the rays of the sun had absorbed the young stranger's retreating
figure on the hill that she shook off her temporary sadness and
answered her would-be partner in the affirmative.
She remained with her comrades till dusk, and participated with a
certain zest in the dancing; though, being heart-whole as yet, she
enjoyed treading a measure purely for its own sake; little divining
when she saw "the soft torments, the bitter sweets, the pleasing
pains, and the agreeable distresses" of those girls who had been
wooed and won, what she herself was capable of in that kind. The
struggles and wrangles of the lads for her hand in a jig were an
amusement to her--no more; and when they became fierce she rebuked
them. She might have stayed even later, but the incident of her father's
odd appearance and manner returned upon the girl's mind to make her
anxious, and wondering what had become of him she dropped away from
the dancers and bent her steps towards the end of the village at
which the parental cottage lay.
While yet many score yards off, other rhythmic sounds than those she
had quitted became audible to her; sounds that she knew well--so
well. They were a regular series of thumpings from the interior of
the house, occasioned by the violent rocking of a cradle upon a stone
floor, to which movement a feminine voice kept time by singing, in a
vigorous gallopade, the favourite ditty of "The Spotted Cow"-