he wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the
wedding-day; really to again implore her advice. It was a gentleman
who had chosen her, which perhaps her mother had not sufficiently
considered. A post-nuptial explanation, which might be accepted with
a light heart by a rougher man, might not be received with the same
feeling by him. But this communication brought no reply from Mrs
Durbeyfield.

Despite Angel Clare's plausible representation to himself and to Tess
of the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in
truth an element of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a
later date. He loved her dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and
fancifully than with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for
him. He had entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to
an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he beheld in this
idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes. Unsophistication
was a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really struck one
until he came here. Yet he was very far from seeing his future track
clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would be able to
consider himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the tinge
of recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense
that he had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices
of his family.

"Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to wait till you
were quite settled in your midland farm?" she once asked timidly.
(A midland farm was the idea just then.)

"To tell the truth, my Tess, I don't like you to be left anywhere
away from my protection and sympathy."

The reason was a good one, so far as it went. His influence over her
had been so marked that she had caught his manner and habits, his
speech and phrases, his likings and his aversions. And to leave her
in farmland would be to let her slip back again out of accord with
him. He wished to have her under his charge for another reason.
His parents had naturally desired to see her once at least before he
carried her off to a distant settlement, English or colonial; and
as no opinion of theirs was to be allowed to change his intention,
he judged that a couple of months' life with him in lodgings
whilst seeking for an advantageous opening would be of some social
assistance to her at what she might feel to be a trying ordeal--her
presentation to his mother at the Vicarage.

Next, he wi