noon
Hetty walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which she had to traverse , dreading to meet Mr. Craig , to whom she could hardly have spoken civilly . How relieved she was when she had got safely under the oaks and among the fern of the Chase ! Even then she was as ready to be startled as the deer that leaped away at her approach . She thought nothing of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy alleys between the fern , and made the beauty of their living green more visible than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon : she thought of nothing that was present . She only saw something that was possible : Mr. Arthur Donnithorne coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove . That was the foreground of Hetty 's picture ; behind it lay a bright hazy something -- days that were not to be as the other days of her life had been . It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god , who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven .