As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young

upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in

the neighbourhood of Trantridge.

"Not one of the ancient d'Urbervilles of Kingsbere and other places?"

asked his son. "That curiously historic worn-out family with its

ghostly legend of the coach-and-four?"

"O no. The original d'Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty

or eighty years ago--at least, I believe so. This seems to be a

new family which had taken the name; for the credit of the former

knightly line I hope they are spurious, I'm sure. But it is odd

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to hear you express interest in old families. I thought you set less

store by them even than I."

"You misapprehend me, father; you often do," said Angel with a

little impatience. "Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of

their being old. Some of the wise even among themselves 'exclaim

against their own succession,' as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically,

dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached to them."

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too

subtle for Mr Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had

been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior

so-called d'Urberville, the young man developed the most culpable

passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have

made him know better. A knowledge of his career having come to

the ears of Mr Clare, when he was in that part of the country

preaching missionary sermons, he boldly took occasion to speak to

the delinquent on his spiritual state. Though he was a stranger,

occupying another's pulpit, he had felt this to be his duty, and

took for his text the words from St Luke: "Thou fool, this night thy

soul shall be required of thee!" The young man much resented this

directness of attack, and in the war of words which followed when

they met he did not scruple publicly to insult Mr Clare, without

respect for his gray hairs. Angel flushed with distress.

"Dear father," he said sadly, "I wish you would not expose yourself

to such gratuitous pain from scoundrels!"

"Pain?" said his father, his rugged face shining in the ardour of

self-abnegation. "The only pain to me was pain on his account, poor,

foolish young man. Do you suppose his incensed words could give

me any pain, or even his blows? 'Being reviled we bless; being

persecuted we suffer it; being defamed we entreat; we are made as the

filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things unto this

day.' Those ancient and noble words to the Corinthians are strictly

true at this present hour."




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