od-night."

She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had
been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on
her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that
filled her heart.

As for Hetty, she was soon in the wood again--her waking dreams being
merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.

Chapter XVI

Links

ARTHUR DONNITHORNE, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to
go and see Mr. Irwine this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing
so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after.
The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of
the family having a different breakfast-hour; Arthur will have an early
ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best
over a meal.

The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an
easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable
ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father
confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly
conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in
an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an
appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous
times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is
quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for
a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third
glasses of claret.

Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they
committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed:
when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and
are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more
likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you
were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with
a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing
particular to say.

However, Arthur Donnithorne, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on
horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open
his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he
passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest
purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now, for
getting in the hay, about whi