Any affection or comfort Dinah could
have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as
everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking
she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better
bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.
She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the
old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to
dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown
condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate
one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged
to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her
thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon
fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she
would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid
would help her to get a situation, if she krew Hetty had her uncle's
leave.
When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to
wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave
as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming
health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to
leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual
in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap,
an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young
roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and
eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her.
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