“O yes; if it is for your happiness and worldly convenience. But my life before I came here—I want—”
“Well, it is for my convenience as well as my happiness. If I have a very large farm, either English or colonial, you will be invaluable as a wife to me; better than a woman out of the largest mansion in the country. So please—please, dear Tessy, disabuse your mind of the feeling that you will stand in my way.”
“But my history. I want you to know it—you must let me tell you—you will not like me so well!”
“Tell it if you wish to, dearest. This precious history then. Yes, I was born at so-and-so, Anno Domini —”
“I was born at Marlott,” she said, catching at his words as a help, lightly as they were spoken. “And I grew up there. And I was in the Sixth Standard when I left school, and they said I had great aptness, and should make a good teacher, so it was settled that I should be one. But there was trouble in my family; father was not very industrious, and he drank a little.”
“Yes, yes. Poor child! Nothing new.” He pressed her more closely to his side.
“And then—there is something very unusual about it—about me. I—I was—”
Tess’s breath quickened.
“Yes, dearest. Never mind.”
“I—I—am not a Durbeyfield, but a d’Urberville—a descendant of the same family as those that owned the old house we passed. And—we are all gone to nothing!”