"I? Our great relation? We have no such relation. What has put
that into your head?"

"I heard 'em talking about it up at Rolliver's when I went to find
father. There's a rich lady of our family out at Trantridge, and
mother said that if you claimed kin with the lady, she'd put 'ee in
the way of marrying a gentleman."

His sister became abruptly still, and lapsed into a pondering
silence. Abraham talked on, rather for the pleasure of utterance
than for audition, so that his sister's abstraction was of no
account. He leant back against the hives, and with upturned face
made observations on the stars, whose cold pulses were beating
amid the black hollows above, in serene dissociation from these two
wisps of human life. He asked how far away those twinklers were,
and whether God was on the other side of them. But ever and anon
his childish prattle recurred to what impressed his imagination
even more deeply than the wonders of creation. If Tess were made
rich by marrying a gentleman, would she have money enough to buy a
spyglass so large that it would draw the stars as near to her as
Nettlecombe-Tout?

The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole
family, filled Tess with impatience.

"Never mind that now!" she exclaimed.

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"