The blood rushed to Hetty’s face, and then fled back again as she looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if fascinated by fear.  Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a deep horror, like a great gulf, between them.  But at the words “and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead,” a piercing shriek rang through the hall.  It was Hetty’s shriek.  Adam started to his feet and stretched out his arms towards her.  But the arms could not reach her:  she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.

Chapter XLIV

Arthur’s Return

When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father’s death, his first feeling was, “Poor Grandfather!  I wish I could have got to him to be with him when he died.  He might have felt or wished something at the last that I shall never know now.  It was a lonely death.”

It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that.  Pity and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard for his grandfather’s wishes, without counteracting his own cherished aims for the good of the tenants and the estate.  But it is not in human nature—­only in human pretence—­for a young man like Arthur, with a fine constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give them more and more reason for that good opinion—­it is not possible for such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the death of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very different from exultant joy.  Now his real life was beginning; now he would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them.  He would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he would not exchange that career for any other under the sun.  He felt himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches at election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture; the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like—­happy faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring families on the best terms with him.  The Irwines should dine with him every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very delicate way that Arthur would devise, the lay-impropriator of the Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to the vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways—­at least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct background, for Arthur had not yet seen the woman who would play the lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman.