But Tess did not answer; she throbbingly resumed her walk, her eyes fixed on the ground.  “Pooh—­I don’t believe God said such things!” she murmured contemptuously when her flush had died away.

A plume of smoke soared up suddenly from her father’s chimney, the sight of which made her heart ache.  The aspect of the interior, when she reached it, made her heart ache more.  Her mother, who had just come down stairs, turned to greet her from the fireplace, where she was kindling barked-oak twigs under the breakfast kettle.  The young children were still above, as was also her father, it being Sunday morning, when he felt justified in lying an additional half-hour.

“Well!—­my dear Tess!” exclaimed her surprised mother, jumping up and kissing the girl.  “How be ye?  I didn’t see you till you was in upon me!  Have you come home to be married?”

“No, I have not come for that, mother.”

“Then for a holiday?”

“Yes—­for a holiday; for a long holiday,” said Tess.

“What, isn’t your cousin going to do the handsome thing?”

“He’s not my cousin, and he’s not going to marry me.”

Her mother eyed her narrowly.

“Come, you have not told me all,” she said.

Then Tess went up to her mother, put her face upon Joan’s neck, and told.

“And yet th’st not got him to marry ’ee!” reiterated her mother.  “Any woman would have done it but you, after that!”

“Perhaps any woman would except me.”

“It would have been something like a story to come back with, if you had!” continued Mrs Durbeyfield, ready to burst into tears of vexation.  “After all the talk about you and him which has reached us here, who would have expected it to end like this!  Why didn’t ye think of doing some good for your family instead o’ thinking only of yourself?  See how I’ve got to teave and slave, and your poor weak father with his heart clogged like a dripping-pan.  I did hope for something to come out o’ this!  To see what a pretty pair you and he made that day when you drove away together four months ago!  See what he has given us—­all, as we thought, because we were his kin.  But if he’s not, it must have been done because of his love for ’ee.  And yet you’ve not got him to marry!”

Get Alec d’Urberville in the mind to marry her!  He marry her!  On matrimony he had never once said a word.  And what if he had?  How a convulsive snatching at social salvation might have impelled her to answer him she could not say.  But her poor foolish mother little knew her present feeling towards this man.  Perhaps it was unusual in the circumstances, unlucky, unaccountable; but there it was; and this, as she had said, was what made her detest herself.  She had never wholly cared for him; she did not at all care for him now.  She had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile:  had suddenly despised and disliked him, and had run away.  That was all.  Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and even for her name’s sake she scarcely wished to marry him.