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.