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‘Oh no. The original D’Urbervilles decayed and disappeared sixty or eighty years ago—at least, I believe so. This seems to be a new family which has taken the name; for the credit of the former knightly line I hope they are spurious, I’m sure. But it is odd to hear you express interest in old families. I thought you set less store by them even than I.’

‘You misapprehend me, father; you often do,’ said Angel with a little impatience. ‘Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their being old. Some of the wise even among themselves “exclaim against their own succession,” as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even historically, I am tenderly attached to them.’

This distinction, though by no means a subtle one, was yet too subtle for Mr. Clare the elder, and he went on with the story he had been about to relate; which was that after the death of the senior so-called D’Urberville the young man developed the most reckless passions, though he had a blind mother, whose condition should have made him know better. A knowledge of his career having come to the ears of Mr. Clare, when he was in that part of the country preaching