“Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?”

“Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she’s got to go out with Miss Donnithorne.”

“And she’s teaching you something, is she?”

“Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the stocking-mending—­it looks just like the stocking, you can’t tell it’s been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too.”

“What! are you going to be a lady’s maid?”

“I should like to be one very much indeed.”  Hetty spoke more audibly now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as stupid to Captain Donnithorne as Luke Britton did to her.

“I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?”

“She expects me at four o’clock.  I’m rather late to-day, because my aunt couldn’t spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us time before Miss Donnithorne’s bell rings.”

“Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the Hermitage.  Did you ever see it?”

“No, sir.”

“This is the walk where we turn up to it.  But we must not go now.  I’ll show it you some other time, if you’d like to see it.”

“Yes, please, sir.”

“Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to come so lonely a road?”

“Oh no, sir, it’s never late; I always set out by eight o’clock, and it’s so light now in the evening.  My aunt would be angry with me if I didn’t get home before nine.”

“Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?”

A deep blush overspread Hetty’s face and neck.  “I’m sure he doesn’t; I’m sure he never did; I wouldn’t let him; I don’t like him,” she said hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek.  Then she felt ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her happiness was all gone.  But in the next she felt an arm steal round her, and a gentle voice said, “Why, Hetty, what makes you cry?  I didn’t mean to vex you.  I wouldn’t vex you for the world, you little blossom.  Come, don’t cry; look at me, else I shall think you won’t forgive me.”

Arthur had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and was stooping towards Hetty with a look of coaxing entreaty.  Hetty lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look.  What a space of time those three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her!  Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning.  Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places.  While Arthur gazed into Hetty’s dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that Hetty wanted those signs of high breeding.