On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking home to the village of Marlott, in the Vale of Blackmoor. His name was John Durbeyfield, and he was a haggler who sold small goods from a cart. On the road he met the parson, who greeted him as Sir John. The parson, an antiquarian, had discovered that Durbeyfield was the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d'Urbervilles, whose bones lay in the vaults at Kingsbere. Durbeyfield could not have been more delighted if he had been left a fortune. That same afternoon the village girls were walking in the May Day procession, dressed in white, and among them was his eldest daughter Tess, a handsome girl with a mobile peony mouth. A young gentleman walking through the village with his brothers stopped to dance with the girls, but he did not choose her. As he walked away he looked back and saw her standing apart, and he wished that he had.