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 though perhaps rather ideally than with the impassioned thoroughness of her feeling for him. He had entertained no notion, when doomed as he had thought to an unintellectual bucolic life, that such charms as he beheld in this idyllic creature would be found behind the scenes. Unsophistication was a thing to talk of; but he had not known how it really struck one until he came here. But he was very far from seeing his future track clearly, and it might be a year or two before he would be able to consider himself fairly started in life. The secret lay in the tinge of recklessness imparted to his career and character by the sense that he had been made to miss his true destiny through the prejudices of his family.

‘Don’t you think ’twould ha’ been better for us to wait till you were quite settled in your midland farm?’ she once asked timidly. (A midland farm was the idea just then.)

‘To tell the truth, my Tess, I don’t like you to be left anywhere away from my influence and sympathy.’

The reason was a good one, so far as it went. His influence over her had been so marked that she had caught his manner and habits, his speech