uld go to the back-door to that milkman, and he was inclined to go
thither also. However, in his doubts he turned to the front, and
rang.

The hour being early, the landlady herself opened the door. Clare
inquired for Teresa d'Urberville or Durbeyfield.

"Mrs d'Urberville?"

"Yes."

Tess, then, passed as a married woman, and he felt glad, even though
she had not adopted his name.

"Will you kindly tell her that a relative is anxious to see her?"

"It is rather early. What name shall I give, sir?"

"Angel."

"Mr Angel?"

"No; Angel. It is my Christian name. She'll understand."

"I'll see if she is awake."

He was shown into the front room--the dining-room--and looked out
through the spring curtains at the little lawn, and the rhododendrons
and other shrubs upon it. Obviously her position was by no means so
bad as he had feared, and it crossed his mind that she must somehow
have claimed and sold the jewels to attain it. He did not blame her
for one moment. Soon his sharpened ear detected footsteps upon the
stairs, at which his heart thumped so painfully that he could hardly
stand firm. "Dear me! what will she think of me, so altered as I
am!" he said to himself; and the door opened.

Tess appeared on the threshold--not at all as he had expected to
see her--bewilderingly otherwise, indeed. Her great natural beauty
was, if not heightened, rendered more obvious by her attire. She
was loosely wrapped in a cashmere dressing-gown of gray-white,
embroidered in half-mourning tints, and she wore slippers of the same
hue. Her neck rose out of a frill of down, and her well-remembered
cable of dark-brown hair was partially coiled up in a mass at the
back of her head and partly hanging on her shoulder--the evident
result of haste.

He had held out his arms, but they had fallen again to his side;
for she had not come forward, remaining still in the opening of the
doorway. Mere yellow skeleton that he was now, he felt the contrast
between them, and thought his appearance distasteful to her.

"Tess!" he said huskily, "can you forgive me for going away? Can't
you--come to me? How do you get to be--like this?"

"It is too late," said she, her voice sounding hard through the room,
her eyes shining unnaturally.

"I did not think rightly of you--I did not see you as you were!" he
continued to plead. "I have learnt to since, dearest Tessy mine!"

"Too late, too late!" she said, waving her hand in the impa