And
she would look just the same. It was impossible to think how he could
meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long this sort of
influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with Hetty now. He
had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should marry Adam,
and there was nothing that contributed more to his happiness in these
moments than the thought of their marriage. It was the exaggerating
effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a little more
quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing again as she
really was, as Adam's wife, at work quite prosaically in her new home,
he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past feelings. Thank
heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty of affairs and
interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of playing the fool
again.
Pleasant the crack of the post-boy's whip! Pleasant the sense of being
hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round
his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town--very
much like Treddleston--where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the
manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and
hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable suggestion
of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look, the woods
were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion looked down
from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its parapet
and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and elms--masses
reddened now with early buds.
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