chooses,
to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet
wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage
such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and
majestic and the women all lovely and loving.

It was very much in this way that our friend Adam Bede thought about
Hetty; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she
behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only
because she doesn't love me well enough; and he was sure that her love,
whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could
possess on earth. Before you despise Adam as deficient in penetration,
pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of
any pretty woman--if you ever COULD, without hard head-breaking
demonstration, believe evil of the ONE supremely pretty woman who has
bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of
the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.

Arthur Donnithorne, too, had the same sort of notion about Hetty, so
far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a
dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering
tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and
if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself
being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so clingingly
fond of him. God made these dear women so--and it is a convenient
arrangement in case of sickness.

After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way
sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they
deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we
don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty
reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.
Long dark eyelashes, now--what can be more exquisite? I find it
impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with
a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that
they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in
the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has
been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length
that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or
else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's
grandmother, which