She had no tears this morning.  She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present.  Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her.  For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.  As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way.  She should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought with her.  For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life—­the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton’s at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say “No” to for a long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once.  These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing.

She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the dark old clothes-press.  Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down in delicate rings—­and they were just as beautiful as they were that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber glowing with vanity and hope.  She was not thinking of her neck and arms now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her.  Her eyes wandered sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the growing dawn.  Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind?  Of her foreboding words, which had made her angry?  Of Dinah’s affectionate entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble?  No, the impression had been too slight to recur.  Any affection or comfort Dinah could have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as everything else was except her bruised passion.  She was only thinking she could never stay here and go on with the old life—­she could better bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round.  She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the old faces again.  But Hetty’s was not a nature to face difficulties—­to dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition.  Hers was a luxurious and vain nature—­not a passionate one—­and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of terror.  There was not much room for her thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life:  she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady’s maid.  Miss Lydia’s maid would help her to get a situation, if she krew Hetty had her uncle’s leave.