Angel has turned a new corner in his life, feeling that he belongs on the dairy as a farmer and that Tess is the right choice as a wife. Angel leaves the dairy to visit his family and to tell his parents about Tess. Angel’s brothers, Felix and Cuthbert, disapprove of Angel marrying Tess but do little to discourage him. His parents had intended Angel to marry Miss Mercy Chant, a real “lady” and local teacher. Angel is against the union and proposes to his parents that Tess Durbeyfield would be a much better choice.
Angel and his father debate the merits of Mercy and Tess as suitable wives for a farmer. Angel’s wishes win out with his father’s concern expressed by his question, “Is she of a family such as you would care to marry into—a lady, in short?” His parents warn Angel not to rush into a hasty marriage with an unknown woman, but his descriptions of her are enough. Reverend Clare relates a story of a convert, one Alec d’Urberville, who has become a lay minister and street preacher.
Angel returns to the dairy and asks Tess to marry him. Tess says that she cannot. Angel persists, not being too aggressive in his tactics to convince Tess, but she insists, “I am not good enough—not worthy enough.” Alone, Tess wonders why her past has not caught up to her at Talbothays, and she feels both “positive pleasure and positive pain” as she wrestles with her feelings for Angel and the past that is bound to catch up to her. She resolves to give in to Angel’s proposal: “I shall give way—I shall say yes—I shall let myself marry him—I cannot help it.”
Tess rethinks her position, even suggesting that any of the other milkmaids would be worthy wives for Angel. Angel refuses Tess’ suggestions, and when Mr. Crick needs a volunteer to drive the milk, now late for delivery, straight to the train station in Egdon Heath, Angel volunteers, and Tess goes along for the ride. It is during this ride, in a downpour of rain, that Angel learns that Tess comes from the d’Urberville family. He suggests that she adopt the “d’Urberville” spelling, and he quells her fears about his hating “old families.”
Relieved, Tess accepts Angel’s marriage proposal if “it is sure to make you happy to have me as your wife and you feel that you wish to marry me, very, very much … .” Then Tess kisses Angel, and he discovers “what an impassioned woman’s kisses were like upon the lips of one whom she loved with all her heart and soul, as Tess loved him.”
Tess insists that she write her mother in Marlott, and Angel then remembers that day four years earlier, during the May Dance, that he had seen Tess but had not danced with her.
