“Will you show me how to be a lady, Rose?”
“Oh, Hetty, no one can show you. You must find out the way yourself. You will, too, if you are in earnest, and if you love my mother as she deserves to be loved. Hetty, my mother is the gentlest of women, and yet no queen could be more dignified, more ladylike.”
“Would she frighten me awfully?” whispered Hetty.
“Oh, you poor child! There, I won’t talk any more. Wait until you see her!”
Hetty was rather under than over educated for her station; but there was a certain sweetness, and even refined charm about her, which gave me a sense of almost pain as I looked at her. Was Jack worthy of this passionate, loving heart?
Sunday passed peacefully, but I did not forget what lay before me on Monday morning. The real crucial turn in Jack’s affairs would come then.
I went early to town, and saw Mr Chillingfleet, the head of Jack’s firm, about eleven o’clock. Jack had told me that twelve was the hour when the money was generally collected and sent to the bank. I don’t know how I managed to inveigle a young clerk to coax Mr Chillingfleet to see me, but I did, and at eleven o’clock I stood before him.
I looked into his face. I knew that a great deal hung upon that interview; I knew that my mother’s future happiness in life, that all poor Hetty’s bliss or undoing depended on what sort of face Mr Chillingfleet possessed. I was a good reader of physiognomy, and I studied his with an eager flash.
It was a firm face: the lips thin, the chin both long and square, the check-bones high; the eyes, however, were kind, honest, straightforward. I looked into Mr Chillingfleet’s eyes, and took courage.
“You want to see me, young lady?” said the chief of the great house.