ved at present the
idea that the young squire could ever be her lover than a baker's pretty
daughter in the crowd, whom a young emperor distinguishes by an imperial
but admiring smile, conceives that she shall be made empress. But the
baker's daughter goes home and dreams of the handsome young emperor, and
perhaps weighs the flour amiss while she is thinking what a heavenly lot
it must be to have him for a husband. And so, poor Hetty had got a face
and a presence haunting her waking and sleeping dreams; bright, soft
glances had penetrated her, and suffused her life with a strange, happy
languor. The eyes that shed those glances were really not half so
fine as Adam's, which sometimes looked at her with a sad, beseeching
tenderness, but they had found a ready medium in Hetty's little
silly imagination, whereas Adam's could get no entrance through that
atmosphere. For three weeks, at least, her inward life had consisted of
little else than living through in memory the looks and words Arthur had
directed towards her--of little else than recalling the sensations with
which she heard his voice outside the house, and saw him enter, and
became conscious that his eyes were fixed on her, and then became
conscious that a tall figure, looking down on her with eyes that seemed
to touch her, was coming nearer in clothes of beautiful texture with an
odour like that of a flower-garden borne on the evening breeze. Foolish
thoughts! But all this happened, you must remember, nearly sixty years
ago, and Hetty was quite uneducated--a simple farmer's girl, to whom
a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an Olympian god. Until
to-day, she had never looked farther into the future than to the next
time Captain Donnithorne would come to the Farm, or the next Sunday when
she should see him at church; but now she thought, perhaps he would try
to meet her when she went to the Chase to-morrow--and if he should
speak to her, and walk a little way, when nobody was by! That had never
happened yet; and now her imagination, instead of retracing the past,
was busy fashioning what would happen to-morrow--whereabout in the
Chase she should see him coming towards her, how she should put her new
rose-coloured ribbon on, which he had never seen, and what he would say
to her to make her return his glance--a glance which she would be living
through in her memory, over and over again, all the rest of the day.

In this state of mind, how could Hetty give any