creatures; and she accordingly drifted into
that passive responsiveness to all things her lover suggested, characteristic of
the frame of mind.
    But she wrote anew to her mother, ostensibly to notify the wedding-day;
really to again implore her advice. It was a gentleman who had chosen her, which
perhaps her mother had not sufficiently considered. A post-nuptial explanation,
which might be accepted with a light heart by a rougher man, might not be
received with the same feeling by him. But this communication brought no reply
from Mrs. Durbeyfield.
    Despite Angel Clare's plausible representations to himself and to Tess of
the practical need for their immediate marriage, there was in truth an element
of precipitancy in the step, as became apparent at a later date. He loved her
dearly, though perhaps rather ideally and fancifully than with the impassioned
thoroughness of her feeling for him. He had entertained no notion, when doomed
as he had thought to an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he
beheld in this idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes.
Unsophistication was a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really
struck one until he came here. Yet he was very far from seeing his future track
clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would be able to consider
himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the tinge of reckless-ness
imparted to his career and character by the sense that he had been made to miss
his true destiny through the prejudices of his family.
    »Don't you think 'twould have been better for us to wait till you were quite
settled in your midland farm?« she once asked timidly. (A midland farm was the
idea just then.)
    »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, he judged
that a couple of months' life with him in lodgings whilst seeking for an
advantageous opening would be of
