Hetty was in bed, pretending sleep.  Had she known it, a word from her might have mended matters.  Even had he found her in tears there was enough good nature in the man to have made him relent.

At sight of her beautiful face he felt half-inclined to awake her and have the quarrel cleared up.  But, to begin with, he was not wholly certain of his sobriety.  And she, too, distrusted it.  He had wounded her family pride, to be sure:  but what really kept her silent was the dread of discovering him to be drunk and letting him see that she had discovered it.

Yet she had great need of tears:  for on more than one account she respected her husband, even liked him, and did most desperately long to be loved by him.  After all, she had borne him children:  and since they had died he was her only stay in the world, her only hope of redemption.  Years after there was found among her papers a tear-blotted sheet of verses dating from this sorrowful time:  and though the sorrow opens and shows ahead, as in a flash, the contempt towards which the current is sweeping her, you see her travel down to it with hands bravely battling, clutching at the weak roots of love and hope along the shore: 

     “O thou whom sacred rites design’d
      My guide and husband ever kind,
      My sovereign master, best of friends,
      On whom my earthly bliss depends: 
      If e’er thou didst in Hetty see
      Aught fair or good or dear to thee,
      If gentle speech can ever move
      The cold remains of former love,
      Turn thou at last-my bosom ease,
      Or tell me why I fail to please.

     “Is it because revolving years,
      Heart-breaking sighs, and fruitless tears
      Have quite deprived this form of mine
      Of all that once thou fancied’st fine? 
      Ah no! what once allured thy sight
      Is still in its meridian height. 
      Old age and wrinkles in this face
      As yet could never find a place;
      A youthful grace informs these lines
      Where still the purple current shines,
      Unless by thy ungentle art
      It flies to aid my wretched heart: 
      Nor does this slighted bosom show
      The many hours it spends in woe.

     “Or is it that, oppress’d with care,
      I stun with loud complaints thine ear,
      And make thy home, for quiet meant,
      The seat of noise and discontent? 
      Ah no!  Thine absence I lament
      When half the weary night is spent,
      Yet when the watch, or early morn,
      Has brought me hopes of thy return,
      I oft have wiped these watchful eyes,
      Conceal’d my cares and curb’d my sighs
      In spite of grief, to let thee see
      I wore an endless smile for thee.