"Tess," he said, holding her at arm's length, "you are engaged to
marry some one else!" "No, no!" "Then why do you refuse me?"
"I don't want to marry! I have not thought of doing it. I cannot!
I only want to love you."
"But why?" Driven to subterfuge, she stammered-
"Your father is a parson, and your mother wouldn' like you to marry
such as me. She will want you to marry a lady."
"Nonsense--I have spoken to them both. That was partly why I went
home."
"I feel I cannot--never, never!" she echoed. "Is it too sudden to be asked thus, my Pretty?"
"Yes--I did not expect it."
"If you will let it pass, please, Tessy, I will give you time," he
said. "It was very abrupt to come home and speak to you all at once.
I'll not allude to it again for a while."
She again took up the shining skimmer, held it beneath the pump, and
began anew. But she could not, as at other times, hit the exact
under-surface of the cream with the delicate dexterity required, try
as she might; sometimes she was cutting down into the milk, sometimes
in the air. She could hardly see, her eyes having filled with two
blurring tears drawn forth by a grief which, to this her best friend
and dear advocate, she could never explain.
"I can't skim--I can't!" she said, turning away from him.
Not to agitate and hinder her longer, the considerate Clare began
talking in a more general way: You quite misapprehend my parents.
They are the most simple-mannered
people alive, and quite unambitious. They are two of the few
remaining Evangelical school. Tessy, are you an Evangelical?"
"I don't know." "You go to church very regularly, and our parson here is not very
High, they tell me." Tess's ideas on the views of the parish clergyman, whom she heard
every week, seemed to be rather more vague than Clare's, who had
never heard him at all. "I wish I could fix my mind on what I hear there more firmly than I
do," she remarked as a safe generality. "It is often a great sorrow
to me." She spoke so unaffectedly that Angel was sure in his heart that his
father could not object to her on religious grounds, even though she
did not know whether her principles were High, Low or Broad. He
himself knew that, in reality, the confused beliefs which she held,
apparently imbibed in childhood, were, if anything, Tractarian as to
phraseology, and Pantheistic as to essence. Confused or otherwise,
to disturb them was his last desire: