“Mercy Chant is of a very good family.”

“Pooh!—­what’s the advantage of that, mother?” said Angel quickly.  “How is family to avail the wife of a man who has to rough it as I have, and shall have to do?”

“Mercy is accomplished.  And accomplishments have their charm,” returned his mother, looking at him through her silver spectacles.

“As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the life I am going to lead?—­while as to her reading, I can take that in hand.  She’ll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her.  She’s brim full of poetry—­actualized poetry, if I may use the expression.  She LIVES what paper-poets only write...  And she is an unimpeachable Christian, I am sure; perhaps of the very tribe, genus, and species you desire to propagate.”

“O Angel, you are mocking!”

“Mother, I beg pardon.  But as she really does attend Church almost every Sunday morning, and is a good Christian girl, I am sure you will tolerate any social shortcomings for the sake of that quality, and feel that I may do worse than choose her.”  Angel waxed quite earnest on that rather automatic orthodoxy in his beloved Tess which (never dreaming that it might stand him in such good stead) he had been prone to slight when observing it practised by her and the other milkmaids, because of its obvious unreality amid beliefs essentially naturalistic.

In their sad doubts as to whether their son had himself any right whatever to the title he claimed for the unknown young woman, Mr and Mrs Clare began to feel it as an advantage not to be overlooked that she at least was sound in her views; especially as the conjunction of the pair must have arisen by an act of Providence; for Angel never would have made orthodoxy a condition of his choice.  They said finally that it was better not to act in a hurry, but that they would not object to see her.

Angel therefore refrained from declaring more particulars now.  He felt that, single-minded and self-sacrificing as his parents were, there yet existed certain latent prejudices of theirs, as middle-class people, which it would require some tact to overcome.  For though legally at liberty to do as he chose, and though their daughter-in-law’s qualifications could make no practical difference to their lives, in the probability of her living far away from them, he wished for affection’s sake not to wound their sentiment in the most important decision of his life.

He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess’s life as if they were vital features.  It was for herself that he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance—­not for her skill in the dairy, her aptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions.  Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him.  He held that education had as yet but little