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 my own ancestry,’ he said, ‘though nowadays their true style, strictly speaking, is “clerk” only.’ As Tess had wished that no great publicity should be given to the event, he had mentioned no name. He hoped she would remove that prohibition soon. He proposed that the couple should take Tess’s own name, D'Urberville, as uncorrupted. It was better than her husband’s. He asked if any letter had come from her that day.

Then Mrs. Durbeyfield informed him that no letter had come, but Tess unfortunately had come herself.

When at length the collapse was explained to him a sullen mortification, not usual with Durbeyfield, overpowered the effect of the cheering glass. Yet the intrinsic quality of the event affected his touchy sensitiveness less than its conjectured effect upon the minds of others.

‘To think, now, that this was to be the end o’t!’ said Sir John. ‘And I with a family vault under that there church of Kingsbere as big as Squire Jollard’s ale-cellar, and my folk lying there in sixes and sevens, as genuine county bones and marrow as any recorded in history. And now to be sure what they fellers at