She lifted her head and sat erect in a sharp terror.  Was her father going to seek him?  She had not thought of this as possible.  And if so—­

Leaping up she ran into the open and gazed after him, as though the sight of his bobbing figure could resolve her crowding surmises.  For a minute and more she stood, gazing so; and then, turning, was aware of her mother coming slowly towards her across the wide field.

A number of shallow ditches, dry at this season, crossed the fields in parallels; and at each of these Mrs. Wesley picked up her skirts.  “How young she is!” was Hetty’s thought as she came nearer, and it rose—­purely from habit—­above her own misery.  Hetty was one of those women who admire other women ungrudgingly.  She knew herself to be beautiful, yet in her eyes her mother had always the mien of a goddess.

For her mother’s character, too, she had the deepest, tenderest respect.  But it was the respect of a critic rather than of a child, and touched with humorous wonder.  She knew her firmness of judgment, her self-control, her courage in poverty, the secret ardent piety illuminating her commonest daily actions; she knew how perfectly designed that character was for masculine needs, how strong for guidance the will even in yielding—­but alas! how feeble to help a daughter!

“Your father is riding to Lincoln,” said Mrs. Wesley as she drew near.  Hetty scanned her closely, but read no encouragement in her face.  She fell back on the tone she had used with Emilia and Nancy; knowing, however, that this time it would not be misunderstood.  “I saw that he had taken his cloak with him,” she answered.  “Be frank with me, mother.  You would be frank, you know, with Jacky or Charles, if they were in trouble; whereas now you are not looking me in the face, and your own is white.”

Mrs. Wesley did not answer, but walked with Hetty back to the tree and, at a sign, seated herself on the bank beside her, with her eyes on the road.

“I have been sitting here for quite a long time,” began Hetty, after a pause, and went on lightly.  “Before father passed a tradesman went by—­a man called Wright.”  She paused again as Mrs. Wesley’s hands made an involuntary movement in her lap.  “He has a bill against father; he called with it on the evening you came back from London.  Is father riding after him to pay it?”

“What do you know of that man?” Mrs. Wesley muttered, with her head turned aside and her hands working.

“Very little; yet enough to suspect more than you guess,” said Hetty calmly.

But her mother showed her now a face she had not looked to see.

“You know, then?—­but no, you cannot!”

It was Hetty’s turn to show a face of alarm.  “What is it, dear?  I thought—­indeed I know—­he had a notion about me—­how I was behaving—­and wrote a letter to father.  But that cannot matter now.  Is there anything worse?  I understood he had merely an account against father; an ordinary bill.  It is something worse—­oh, tell me!  Father is riding after him!  I see it in your face.  What is this trouble which I have added to?”