Chapter 49
Tess goes home and nurses her mother back to health and tries to get the family's fields cleared for planting. Her father, only slightly sickly and still greatly lazy, helps a little. As Tess is working one night, she notices that there is a strange man helping plow the Durbeyfield tract of land and she is surprised to realize that it's Alec again.
He's given her family more money as a ploy to win her over, knowing that her family's poverty worries her. She tells him once again to leave her and her family alone and he gets angry and leaves the field. She's worried that he's going to her parents' home again, so she starts home when Liza Lu comes to tell her that their father has dropped dead. Tess and her family will be kicked out of their home now because their lease ends with the end of John Durbeyfield's life. Tess is truly desperate now because they have no money and nowhere to go.
Topic Tracking: Sacrifice 12
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