That was all she said on the matter.  If Tess had been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane, notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was possessed, he would probably not have withstood her.  But her mood of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was his best advocate.  Pride, too, entered into her submission—­which perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence in chance too apparent in the whole d’Urberville family—­and the many effective chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched.

The remainder of their discourse was on practical matters only.  He now handed her a packet containing a fairly good sum of money, which he had obtained from his bankers for the purpose.  The brilliants, the interest in which seemed to be Tess’s for her life only (if he understood the wording of the will), he advised her to let him send to a bank for safety; and to this she readily agreed.

These things arranged, he walked with Tess back to the carriage, and handed her in.  The coachman was paid and told where to drive her.  Taking next his own bag and umbrella—­the sole articles he had brought with him hitherwards—­he bade her goodbye; and they parted there and then.

The fly moved creepingly up a hill, and Clare watched it go with an unpremeditated hope that Tess would look out of the window for one moment.  But that she never thought of doing, would not have ventured to do, lying in a half-dead faint inside.  Thus he beheld her recede, and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet, with peculiar emendations of his own—­

    God’s NOT in his heaven: 
    All’s WRONG with the world!

When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.

XXXVIII

As she drove on through Blackmoor Vale, and the landscape of her youth began to open around her, Tess aroused herself from her stupor.  Her first thought was how would she be able to face her parents?

She reached a turnpike-gate which stood upon the highway to the village.  It was thrown open by a stranger, not by the old man who had kept it for many years, and to whom she had been known; he had probably left on New Year’s Day, the date when such changes were made.  Having received no intelligence lately from her home, she asked the turnpike-keeper for news.

“Oh—­nothing, miss,” he answered.  “Marlott is Marlott still.  Folks have died and that.  John Durbeyfield, too, hev had a daughter married this week to a gentleman-farmer; not from John’s own house, you know; they was married elsewhere; the gentleman being of that high standing that John’s own folk was not considered well-be-doing enough to have any part in it, the bridegroom seeming not to know how’t have been discovered that John is a old and ancient nobleman himself by blood, with family skillentons in their own vaults to this day, but done out of his property in the time o’ the Romans.  However, Sir John, as we call ’n now, kept up the wedding-day as well as he could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish; and John’s wife sung songs at The Pure Drop till past eleven o’clock.”