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 turning to where he sat in the background. ‘If you say she ought to go, she will go.’

‘I don’t like my children going and making themselves beholden to strange kin,’ murmured he. ‘I’m the head of the noblest branch of the family, and I ought to keep myself up.’

His reasons for staying away were worse to Tess than her own objection to going. ‘Well, as I killed the horse, mother’, she said mournfully, ‘I suppose I ought to do something. I don’t mind going and seeing her, but you must leave it to me about asking for help. And don’t go thinking about her making a match for me—it is silly.’

‘Very well said, Tess!’ observed her father sententiously.

‘Who said I had such a thought?’ asked Joan.

‘I fancy it is in your mind, mother. But I’ll go.’

Rising early next day, she walked to the hill-town called Shaston, and there took advantage of a van which twice in the week ran from Shaston eastward to Chaseborough, passing near Trantridge, the parish in which the vague and mysterious Mrs. D’Urberville had her residence.