ld perhaps see her going out in her carriage--or rather,
they would HEAR of it: it was impossible to imagine these things
happening at Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this
splendour, Hetty got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the
little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with
a bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision
to care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace
with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room,
in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf
round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears.

How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the
easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a
sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark
rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great
dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an
imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.

Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Hetty! How the
men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging on
his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round,
soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just
as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes
wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he
likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little
darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he
wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and
movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise.
Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great
physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she
uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the
language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those
exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as
petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the
dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her
children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round
things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and
the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he