It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling
hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate
rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form
a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put
down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before
her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help
sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Hetty's stays
were not of white satin--such as I feel sure heroines must generally
wear--but of a dark greenish cotton texture.
Oh yes! She was very pretty. Captain Donnithorne thought so. Prettier
than anybody about Hayslope--prettier than any of the ladies she had
ever seen visiting at the Chase--indeed it seemed fine ladies were
rather old and ugly--and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's
daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Hetty looked at
herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had ever
felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her
like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over
again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round
her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still.
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