She only saw something that was possible: Mr.
Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove.
That was the foreground of Hetty's picture; behind it lay a bright hazy
something--days that were not to be as the other days of her life had
been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any
time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven. There was no
knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come.
If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some
unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was
going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy
would befall her? Hetty had never read a novel; if she had ever seen
one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could
she find a shape for her expectations? They were as formless as the
sweet languid odours of the garden at the Chase, which had floated past
her as she walked by the gate.
She is at another gate now--that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters
the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes, the
fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how dreary
it was--the thought of going out at the other end of the wood, into the
unsheltered road, without having seen him.
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