Her face of grief and her empty hands told sufficiently what the result of her errand had been.  No remark was made by Miss Davis or the girls, though Nell, who thought the drawings wonderfully pretty, was impatient to know what her papa had said of them.  She was too much in awe of Miss Davis to seek to have her curiosity gratified just then; and the evening study went on as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER XVII.

HETTY’S FUTURE IS PLANNED.

This was the severest trial Hetty had ever encountered.  Longing for special love, and delight in reproducing the beautiful, were part of one and the same impulse in her nature, and, crushed in the one, all her heart had gone forth in the other direction.  Now both had been equally condemned in her as faults, and she fell back, as before, on the mere dull effort towards submission which had already carried her surely, if joylessly, over so many difficult years of her young life.  She worked patiently at her books and fulfilled her duties; and she grew thinner and paler, and the old sad look became habitual to her lips and eyes.  Another year passed, and as Phyllis and Nell approached nearer and nearer to the period for “coming out” they were more frequently absent from the school-room, and Hetty’s days were more solitary than they used to be.

All her mind was now fixed on the idea of fitting herself as soon as possible for some sort of post as governess.  She knew she never could take such a position as that which Miss Davis filled, and had meekly admitted to herself that a humble situation must content her.

She often wondered how it would be with her when the Enderby girls should no longer need Miss Davis; and decided according to her own judgment that she ought to be ready to seek a place for herself in the world as soon as the elder girls should have completed their studies.

One evening she sat opposite to Miss Davis at the school-room fireside.  Phyllis and Nell were in the drawing-room with their mother.  Miss Davis was netting energetically, and Hetty, who had been studying busily, dropped her book and was gazing absently into the fire.

“Hetty,” said Miss Davis presently, “put away your book, I want to talk to you.”

Hetty obeyed, and looked at her governess expectantly.

“My dear, you know very well that in another year I shall no longer be needed here.  Phyllis and Nell will then be eighteen and seventeen, and their mother has decided that they shall come out at the same time.  When I am gone there will no longer be any object in your staying in this house.  And yet, as you will then be only sixteen, you will be young to begin your life among strangers.”

“Yes,” said Hetty with a sinking of the heart; “but it is very good of you to think about me like this.  Of course I shall have to go.  I suppose I can get in somewhere as a nursery governess.”