"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,

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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 wished to see a little of the working of a flour-mill,

having an idea that he might combine the use of one with

corn-growing. The proprietor of a large old water-mill at

Wellbridge--once the mill of an Abbey--had offered him the inspection

of his time-honoured mode of procedure, and a hand in the operations

for a few days, whenever he should choose to come. Clare paid a

visit to the place, some few miles distant, one day at this time,

to inquire particulars, and returned to Talbothays in the evening.

She found him determined to spend a short time at the Wellbridge

flour-mills. And what had determined him? Less the opportunity of an

insight into grinding and bolting than the casual fact that lodgings

were to be obtained in that very farmhouse which, before its

mutilation, had been the mansion of a branch of the d'Urberville

family. This was always how Clare settled practical questions; by

a sentiment which had nothing to do with them. They decided to go

immediately after the wedding, and remain for a fortnight, instead

of journeying to towns and inns. "Then we will start off to examine some farms on the other side of

London that I have heard of," he said, "and by March or April we will

pay a visit to my father and mother."

Questions of procedure such as these arose and passed, and the day,

the incredible day, on which she was to become his, loomed large in

the near future. The thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, was

the date. His wife, she said to herself. Could it ever be? Their

two selves together, nothing to divide them, every incident shared

by them; why not? And yet why? One Sunday morning Izz Huett returned from church, and spoke

privately to Tess. "You was not called home this morning."




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