e of the chief pleasures of the
young people of Welbury and Springton. In Hetty's present frame of mind,
this lonely lake had a strange fascination for her. In her youth she had
never loved it: she had always been eager to land on one of the islands,
and spend hours in the depths of the fragrant woods, rather than on the
dark and silent water. But now she never wearied of rowing round and
round its water margin, and looking down into its unsounded depths. It
was believed that Welbury Lake was unfathomable; but this notion
probably had its foundation in the limited facilities in that region for
sounding deep waters.

One day Hetty rowed across the lake to the point where the Springton
road came down to the shore. Pushing the boat up on the beach, she
sprang out; and, telling Raby to wait there till she returned, she
walked rapidly up the road. A guide-post said, "Six miles to Springton."
Hetty stood some time looking reflectingly at this sign: then she walked
on for half a mile, till she came to another road running north; here a
guide-post said, "Fairfield, five miles." This was what Hetty was in
search of. As she read the sign, she said in a low tone: "Five miles;
that is easily walked." Then she turned and hastened back to the shore,
stopping on the way to gather for Raby a big bunch of the snowy
Indian-pipes, which grew in shining clumps in the moist dark hemlock
woods. A strange and terrible idea was slowly taking possession of
Hetty. Day and night it haunted her. Once having been entertained as
possible, it could never be banished from her mind. How such an impulse
could have become deep-seated in a nature like Hetty's will for ever
remain a mystery. One would have said that she was the last woman in the
world to commit a morbid or ill-regulated act. But the act she was
meditating now was one which seemed like the act of insanity. Yet had
Hetty never in her life seemed farther removed from any such tendency.
She was calm, cheerful, self-contained. If any one saw any change in
her, it seemed like nothing more than the natural increase of quiet and
decorum coming with her increased age. Even her husband, when he looked
back on these months, trying in anguish to remember every day, every
hour, could recall no word or deed or look of hers which had seemed to
him unnatural. And yet there was not a day, hardly an hour, in which her
mind was not occupied with the details of a plan for going away secretly
from her house, u