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Alec d’Urberville was great scoundrel. When he saw beautiful Tess near his tent during her first visit to Trantridge, he decided to appropriate her. This wrong man did everything he could to entangle poor Tess into his snares. He addressed a letter to her parents before she could return home. Her mother told her how Mrs. d’Urberville wanted her to work on her little fowl-farm. She was to look after her birds. In course of time she would own her as her kin and helper in becoming a lady. She could look after the birds very well. All the members of the family wanted her to go there. One day Alec came to her place in her absence and wanted her mother to send the final answers. Poor Tess wanted to earn money for buying a new horse for the family. At last, she yielded to the force of circumstances.
A cart came to take her to Trantridge. The box containing her clothes was wheeled upto it. All members of her family went up to a certain distance to see her off. When she was gone, her mother remembered how poor Tess had gone unwillingly. She thought to herself that she should have sent her with the young stranger only after knowing if he was a good-hearted man or not. When Tess reached the cart, she found that Alec had come there to take her on his own dogcart She did not like to drive with him, but he was the master. She had to yield. She stepped up into the dog cart and he drove it very fast. When she requested him to be slow, he smiled like a villain. He told her that he always went down at full gallop. There was nothing like it for raising the spirits. The horse was also very naughty. It had already killed a man.
While going down the incline of a hill. Alec drove very fast. The wheels of his dogcart spurn like a top when it moved down the hill. Tess saw that the hoofs out shown the daylight. Tess showed no open fear but she was compelled to hold on round Alec’s waist. While going down the second incline Alec loosened the rein to drive very rapidly. He wanted her to put her arms again around his waist. She did not do so but she held on independently. He promised to stop if she favored him with a kiss. At this, she moved away from her seat and avoided his kissing. She said that she expected her kinsman. She did not want him to kiss her. If she had known all this, she would not have come with him. At this, a big tear rolled down her face. She sat still and Alec gave her a kiss of mastery. She flushed with shame and wiped the spot on her cheek with her handkerchief. Then she had undone the kiss physically, Alec was annoyed. He asked for a second kiss when he began to drive on the incline again. At this time Tess played a trick upon him. She threw her hat down the dogcart. When he stopped the dogcart, she got down herself and picked it up. Then she refused to mount it. She told him how she had made the hat blow off. Once Alec tried to drive back upon her, but he could not injure her when she said that she would go back to her mother, he promised never to try again to kiss her. Alec thought that he had lost her trust due to his own misdemeanor. He had lost her confidence for the time. Thus Tess was - taken to Trantridge and its poultry farm. This journey revealed to Tess that Alec was a great scoundrel. He was a villain through and through. He did not possess the nobility of character. He lacked manliness and courage for which women liked men at all times and places. He was a cunning and crafty man. His mother did not like him. He was a brute. Tears of a beautiful woman did not move him. Tess had a deep-seated aversion for this scoundrel. Indeed he was a devil, for he was not a good-hearted man. Joan Durbeyfield made a grave mistake when she sent her innocent daughter with him.