The desire to see Hetty had rushed back like an
ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which this
trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as he
brushed his hair--pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was
because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of
it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing
Hetty to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all
Irwine's fault. "If Irwine had said nothing, I shouldn't have thought
half so much of Hetty as of Meg's lameness." However, it was just the
sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish
Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in Fir-tree
Grove--the way Hetty was sure to come in walking from the Hall Farm.
So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Hetty was a mere
circumstance of his walk, not its object.
Arthur's shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the Chase
than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a warm
afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o'clock when he stood before
the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine wood which
skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree Grove, not
because the firs were many, but because they were few.
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