It was a long while—more than an hour before
Arthur had brought his meditations to this point;
but once arrived there, he could stay no longer at
the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with
movement until he should see Hetty again. And
it was already late enough to go and dress for dinner,
for his grandfather’s dinner-hour was six.
Evening in the Wood
It happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight
quarrel with Mrs. Best, the housekeeper, on this Thursday
morning—a fact which had two consequences
highly convenient to Hetty. It caused Mrs. Pomfret
to have tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired
that exemplary lady’s maid with so lively a
recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best’s
conduct, and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly
the inferiority as an interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret,
that Hetty required no more presence of mind than
was demanded for using her needle, and throwing in
an occasional “yes” or “no.”
She would have wanted to put on her hat earlier than
usual; only she had told Captain Donnithorne that she
usually set out about eight o’clock, and if he
should go to the Grove again expecting to see
her, and she should be gone! Would he come?
Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between
memory and dubious expectation. At last the minute-hand
of the old-fashioned brazen-faced timepiece was on
the last quarter to eight, and there was every reason
for its being time to get ready for departure.
Even Mrs. Pomfret’s preoccupied mind did not
prevent her from noticing what looked like a new flush
of beauty in the little thing as she tied on her hat
before the looking-glass.
“That child gets prettier and prettier every
day, I do believe,” was her inward comment.
“The more’s the pity. She’ll
get neither a place nor a husband any the sooner for
it. Sober well-to-do men don’t like such
pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired
than if I had been so very pretty. However, she’s
reason to be grateful to me for teaching her something
to get her bread with, better than farm-house work.
They always told me I was good-natured—and
that’s the truth, and to my hurt too, else there’s
them in this house that wouldn’t be here now
to lord it over me in the housekeeper’s room.”
Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground
which she had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig,
to whom she could hardly have spoken civilly.
How relieved she was when she had got safely under
the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even
then she was as ready to be startled as the deer that
leaped away at her approach. She thought nothing
of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy
alleys between the fern, and made the beauty of their
living green more visible than it had been in the
overpowering flood of noon: she thought of nothing
that was present. She only saw something that
