Finding herself in his company now, she thought only of prolonging the pleasure and escaping with him somewhere out of the reach of unfriendly eyes.

She darted through the outer gate of the stable-yard just as the great clock above the archway was striking ten; and was soon plunging through a copse on the outskirts of the village, and making for the open country.
Scamp snuffed the breeze and barked for joy, and Hetty danced along over the grass and through trees, forgetting everything but her own intense enjoyment of freedom in the open air that she loved.

Over yonder lay the forge, where, as a baby of four, she had watched the great horses being shod, and the sparks flying from their feet; and further on were the fields and the bit of wood where she had roamed alone, up to her eyes in the tall flag leaves and mistaking the yellow lilies for butterflies of a larger growth.

She did not remember all that now, but some pleasant consciousness of a former free happy existence in the midst of this fresh peaceful landscape came across her mind at moments, like gales of hawthorn-scented air.

Mrs.Enderby's mild lectures, Phyllis's contempt, Miss Davis's shocked propriety, even Nell's easily snubbed efforts to stand her friend, all vanished out of her memory as she went skimming along the grass like a swallow, thrilling in all her young nerves with the freshness and wildness of the breeze of heaven, and the vigour and buoyancy of the life within her veins.
Five miles into the open country went Hetty, by a road she had never seen before.