It was through her husband's parents that she
had been charged to send a letter to Clare if she desired; and to
write to them direct if in difficulty. But that sense of her having
morally no claim upon him had always led Tess to suspend her impulse
to send these notes; and to the family at the Vicarage, therefore,
as to her own parents since her marriage, she was virtually
non-existent. This self-effacement in both directions had been quite
in consonance with her independent character of desiring nothing
by way of favour or pity to which she was not entitled on a fair
consideration of her deserts. She had set herself to stand or fall
by her qualities, and to waive such merely technical claims upon a
strange family as had been established for her by the flimsy fact of
a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his name in
a church-book beside hers.
But now that she was stung to a fever by Izz's tale, there was a
limit to her powers of renunciation. Why had her husband not written
to her? He had distinctly implied that he would at least let her
know of the locality to which he had journeyed; but he had not sent a
line to notify his address. Was he really indifferent? But was he
ill? Was it for her to make some advance? Surely she might summon
the courage of solicitude, call at the Vicarage for intelligence, and
express her grief at his silence.
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