If any sound
were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts. The judge
spoke, "Hester Sorrel...."
The blood rushed to Hetty's face, and then fled back again as she
looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if
fascinated by fear. Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a
deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words "and
then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead," a piercing shriek rang
through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek. Adam started to his feet and
stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her:
she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.
Chapter XLIV
Arthur's Return
When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from
his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father's death, his first
feeling was, "Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be
with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the
last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death."
It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity
and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy
thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along
towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually
recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard
for his grandfather's wishes, without counteracting his own cherished
aims for the good of the tenants and the estate.
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