 not fit the
round hole that had been prepared for him. To neither Felix nor Cuthbert had he
ventured to mention Tess.
    His mother made him sandwiches, and his father accompanied him, on his own
mare, a little way along the road. Having fairly well advanced his own affairs
Angel listened in a willing silence, as they jogged on together through the
shady lanes, to his father's account of his parish difficulties, and the
coldness of brother clergymen whom he loved, because of his strict
interpretations of the New Testament by the light of what they deemed a
pernicious Calvinistic doctrine.
    »Pernicious!« said Mr. Clare, with genial scorn; and he proceeded to recount
experiences which would show the absurdity of that idea. He told of wondrous
conversions of evil livers of which he had been the instrument, not only amongst
the poor, but amongst the rich and well-to-do; and he also candidly admitted
many failures.
    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
Trant ridge.
    »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 has
taken the name; for the credit of the former knightly line I hope they are
spurious, I'm sure. But it is odd 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,
