Angel arrives back in England and reunites with his parents, who are startled by how thin and sickly he looks. Angel is eager to see if there are any letters from Tess; when he received her first letter (begging him to come back to her), he was moved to return to England. Now, however, he reads her second letter, in which she angrily says that she will never forgive him. Angel agrees that he has treated Tess badly and wants to find her. He writes to her mother, believing that the Durbeyfield family still lives in the village of Marlott. Joan Durbeyfield writes back with a curt letter, telling Angel that Tess is no longer staying with them and that the Durbeyfields are no longer in Marlott.

The note from Marian and Izz also spurring him, Angel decides to track down Tess. Angel finally tells his parents the truth about Tess’s history, and this leads them to feel more sympathy towards her: “[T]he tenderness towards Tess which her blood, her simplicity, even her poverty, had not engendered, was instantly excited by her sin” (393).