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.
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.
