[Adam Bede by George Eliot]@TWC D-Link book
Adam Bede

CHAPTER XII
12/18

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 keep you now, else I should like to show you the Hermitage.

Did you ever see it ?" "No, sir." "This is the walk where we turn up to it.


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