“Bless your sweet face, my pet,” she said, the mother’s strong love filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put out her arms.  She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said, without looking at her, “You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are both at the cheese.”

After the ale had been drawn and her uncle’s pipe lighted, there was Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown because she would cry instead of going to sleep.  Then there was supper to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help.  Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of leaving Hetty more at ease.  He lingered, because he wanted to see her safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much self-command she showed.  He knew she had not had time to read the letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the letter would contradict everything he had said.  It was hard work for him to leave her—­hard to think that he should not know for days how she was bearing her trouble.  But he must go at last, and all he could do was to press her hand gently as he said “Good-bye,” and hope she would take that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was there the same as ever.  How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home, in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too!  His exasperation at Hetty’s suffering—­and also at the sense that she was possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach—­deafened him to any plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery.  Adam was a clear-sighted, fair-minded man—­a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well as physically.  But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous, he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous.  And I cannot pretend that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation and loving pity.  He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent in his feeling towards Arthur.

“Her head was allays likely to be turned,” he thought, “when a gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands, and that way o’ talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to her in a bold way, as a man couldn’t do that was only her equal; and it’s much if she’ll ever like a common man now.”  He could not help drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them—­at the hard palms and the broken finger-nails.  “I’m a roughish fellow, altogether; I don’t know, now I come to think on’t, what there is much for a woman to like about me; and yet I might ha’ got another wife easy enough, if I hadn’t set my heart on her.  But it’s little matter