The
vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she
is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.
But Hetty seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting,
for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the
linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from
which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of rents,
but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off the
whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings
she had in her ears--oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her
ears bored!--and put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass
and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked
just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down again, with
the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round
her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier
down to a little way below the elbow--they were white and plump, and
dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the wrist, she thought with
vexation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that
ladies never did.
Captain Donnithorne couldn't like her to go on doing work: he would like
to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings, perhaps
with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much--no one else
had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way.
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