Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the
likeness we see--it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more
keenly because something else was and is not. There they were--the sweet
face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the
rounded cheek and the pouting lips--pale and thin, yes, but like Hetty,
and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a
blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman's soul in her, and
left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother's yearning, that
completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of
real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the
debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking culprit
was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree
boughs--she was that Hetty's corpse, which he had trembled to look at
the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from.
But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made
the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a
middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, "My
name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to
sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton.
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