For what could Hetty have been but a servant
elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a
domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not
been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants
and children? But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement.
Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his
superiority to her other admirers, she had never brought herself to
think of accepting him. She liked to feel that this strong, skilful,
keen-eyed man was in her power, and would have been indignant if he had
shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish
tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle Mary Burge, who would have
been grateful enough for the most trifling notice from him. "Mary Burge,
indeed! Such a sallow-faced girl: if she put on a bit of pink ribbon,
she looked as yellow as a crow-flower and her hair was as straight as a
hank of cotton." And always when Adam stayed away for several weeks from
the Hall Farm, and otherwise made some show of resistance to his passion
as a foolish one, Hetty took care to entice him back into the net by
little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble at his
neglect.
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