But other hills and field belonged to Retty's
people, and perhaps others to Marian's, so that I don't value it
particularly."
"Yes--it is surprising how many of the present tillers of the soil
were once owners of it, and I sometimes wonder that a certain school
of politicians don't make capital of the circumstance; but they don't
seem to know it... I wonder that I did not see the resemblance of
your name to d'Urberville, and trace the manifest corruption. And
this was the carking secret!"
She had not told. At the last moment her courage had failed her;
she feared his blame for not telling him sooner; and her instinct
of self-preservation was stronger than her candour.
"Of course," continued the unwitting Clare, "I should have been glad
to know you to be descended exclusively from the long-suffering,
dumb, unrecorded rank and file of the English nation, and not from
the self-seeking few who made themselves powerful at the expense of
the rest. But I am corrupted away from that by my affection for you,
Tess (he laughed as he spoke), and made selfish likewise. For your
own sake I rejoice in your descent. Society is hopelessly snobbish,
and this fact of your extraction may make an appreciable difference
to its acceptance of you as my wife, after I have made you the
well-read woman that I mean to make you.
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