Stoke d’Urberville took her back to the lawn and into the tent, where he left her, soon reappearing with a basket of light luncheon, which he put before her himself. It was evidently the gentleman’s wish not to be disturbed in this pleasant tête-à-tête by the servantry.
“Do you mind my smoking?” he asked.
“Oh, not at all, sir.”
He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the “tragic mischief” of her drama—one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec d’Urberville’s eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which time would cure.
She soon had finished her lunch. “Now I am going home, sir,” she said, rising.
“And what do they call you?” he asked, as he accompanied her along the drive till they were out of sight of the house.
“Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott.”
“And you say your people have lost their horse?”
“I—killed him!” she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she gave particulars of Prince’s death. “And I don’t know what to do for father on account of it!”
“I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth for you. But, Tess, no nonsense about ‘d’Urberville’;—‘Durbeyfield’ only, you know—quite another name.”