Chapter 43
Marian and Tess dig turnips in the fields until it snows, and then they are sent into the barn to husk and stack sheaves of corn, difficult labor for women. Izz shows up at the farm to work there after getting a letter from Marian as well, and the three of them are together again without Rhetty because she's still not doing well.
While they're working in the barn, Tess recognizes two of the women as the Queen of Spades and her sister from Tantridge, the women who picked the fight with her the night that Alec d'Urberville seduced her. The women don't recognize her.
That is not the only Tantridge connection, however, because when the farm owner arrives to check their work, Tess is dismayed to see that it is the man from Tantridge that she and Angel encountered in the inn and that she ran from on the road only days before. He treats her poorly as a way of getting back at her for the way Angel hit him at the inn and the way she ignored him on the road only days before.
Topic Tracking: Coincidence 12
Tess has to stay late to work more because she works a little slower than the other women, so Marian and Izz stay to help her. While Tess is resting at one point, Izz tells Marian about her encounter with Angel. Then when Izz goes to rest, Marian tells Tess about it. Tess is crushed that Angel would do such a thing, but she thinks it is her own fault for not writing to him so that he knows she is waiting for him. She tries to write him a letter that night, but she doesn't know what to say. She knows he does not love her, or he would have come for her or written to her. He wouldn't have asked Izz to go with him to Brazil.
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