All she knew was that youth, moment by moment, was dropping down inexorably behind her.
And, still a child in heart and soul, she saw herself ageing, and then aged, and then withered.

Her twenty-first birthday was well above the horizon.

Soon, soon, she would be 'over twenty-one'! And she was not yet born! That was it! She was not yet born! If the passionate strength of desire could have done the miracle time would have stood still in the heavens while Hilda sought the way of life.
And withal she was not wholly unhappy.

Just as her attitude to her mother was self-contradictory, so was her attitude towards existence.
Sometimes this profound infelicity of hers changed its hues for an instant, and lo! it was bliss that she was bathed in.

A phenomenon which disconcerted her! She did not know that she had the most precious of all faculties, the power to feel intensely.
III Mr.Skellorn did not come; he was most definitely late.
From the window of her bedroom, at the front of the house, Hilda looked westwards up toward the slopes of Chatterley Wood, where as a child she used to go with other children to pick the sparse bluebells that thrived on smoke.