But in all this there was nothing about Hetta.  Hetta, however, thought very much of her own condition, and found herself driven to take some special step by the receipt of two letters from her lover, written to her from Liverpool.  They had never met since she had confessed her love to him.  The first letter she did not at once answer, as she was at that moment waiting to hear what Roger Carbury would say about Mrs Hurtle.  Roger Carbury had spoken, leaving a conviction on her mind that Mrs Hurtle was by no means a fiction,—­but indeed a fact very injurious to her happiness.  Then Paul’s second love-letter had come, full of joy, and love, and contentment,—­with not a word in it which seemed to have been in the slightest degree influenced by...