mething to come out o' this! To see what a pretty pair you and he
made that day when you drove away together four months ago! See what
he has given us--all, as we thought, because we were his kin. But if
he's not, it must have been done because of his love for 'ee. And
yet you've not got him to marry!"

Get Alec d'Urberville in the mind to marry her! He marry HER! On
matrimony he had never once said a word. And what if he had? How a
convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to
answer him she could not say. But her poor foolish mother little
knew her present feeling towards this man. Perhaps it was unusual
in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and
this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself. She had
never wholly cared for him; she did not at all care for him now. She
had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages
he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent
manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly
despised and disliked him, and had run away. That was all. Hate him
she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her
name's sake she scarcely wished to marry him.

"You ought to have been more careful if you didn't mean to get him to
make you his wife!"

"O mother, my mother!" cried the agonized girl, turning passionately
upon her parent as if her poor heart would break. "How could I be
expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months
ago. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why
didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because
they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the
chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!"

Her mother was subdued.

"I thought if I spoke of his fond feelings and what they might lead
to, you would be hontish wi' him and lose your chance," she murmured,
wiping her eyes with her apron. "Well, we must make the best of it,
I suppose. 'Tis nater, after all, and what do please God!"

XIII

The event of Tess Durbeyfield's return from the manor of her bogus
kinsfolk was rumoured abroad, if rumour be not too large a word for
a space of a square mile. In the afternoon several young girls of
Marlott, former schoolfellows and acquaintances of Tess, called to
see her, arriving dressed in their best starched and ironed, as
became visitors to