to break or divert the strain of thought. What a
weak thing her presence must have become to him! She could not help
addressing Clare.

"What have I done--what HAVE I done! I have not told of anything
that interferes with or belies my love for you. You don't think I
planned it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at,
Angel; it is not in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that
deceitful woman you think me!"

"H'm--well. Not deceitful, my wife; but not the same. No, not the
same. But do not make me reproach you. I have sworn that I will
not; and I will do everything to avoid it."

But she went on pleading in her distraction; and perhaps said things
that would have been better left to silence.

"Angel!--Angel! I was a child--a child when it happened! I knew
nothing of men."

"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit."

"Then will you not forgive me?"

"I do forgive you, but forgiveness is not all."

"And love me?"

To this question he did not answer.

"O Angel--my mother says that it sometimes happens so!--she knows
several cases where they were worse than I, and the husband has not
minded it much--has got over it at least. And yet the woman had not
loved him as I do you!"

"Don't, Tess; don't argue. Different societies, different manners.
You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who
have never been initiated into the proportions of social things.
You don't know what you say."

"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!"

She spoke with an impulse to anger, but it went as it came.

"So much the worse for you. I think that parson who unearthed your
pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot
help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of
your want of firmness. Decrepit families imply decrepit wills,
decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising
you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a
new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of
an effete aristocracy!"

"Lots of families are as bad as mine in that! Retty's family were
once large landowners, and so were Dairyman Billett's. And the
Debbyhouses, who now are carters, were once the De Bayeux family.
You find such as I everywhere; 'tis a feature of our county, and I
can't help it."

"So much the worse for the county."

She took these reproaches in their bulk si