her
with timid liking, then given each other a little butterfly kiss,
and toddled off to play together. Arthur would have gone home to his
silk-curtained cot, and Hetty to her home-spun pillow, and both would
have slept without dreams, and to-morrow would have been a life hardly
conscious of a yesterday.

Arthur turned round and walked by Hetty's side without giving a reason.
They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering
presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this
little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Hetty, her feet
rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had
forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her
limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting
on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a
contradiction, but Arthur gathered a certain carelessness and confidence
from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of mind from what
he had expected in such a meeting with Hetty; and full as he was of
vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of silence, for the
thought that his previous debates and scruples were needless.

"You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase," he
said at last, looking down at Hetty; "it is so much prettier as well as
shorter than coming by either of the lodges."

"Yes, sir," Hetty answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice.
She didn't know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Arthur, and
her very vanity made her more coy of speech.

"Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?"

"Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she's got to go out with Miss
Donnithorne."

"And she's teaching you something, is she?"

"Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the
stocking-mending--it looks just like the stocking, you can't tell it's
been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too."

"What! are YOU going to be a lady's maid?"

"I should like to be one very much indeed." Hetty spoke more audibly
now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as
stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.

"I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?"

"She expects me at four o'clock. I'm rather late to-day, because my aunt
couldn't spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us
time before Miss Donnithorne's bell rings."

"Ah, then, I must not