"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" Hetty answered, quickly rousing herself. "I am
perfectly well; and always have been, ever since I can remember."

After this, Hetty went no more with her husband to see Rachel. When he
asked her, she said: "No, Eben: I am going to see her alone. I will not
go with you again. She makes me uncomfortable. If she makes me feel
so, when I am alone with her, I shall not go at all. I don't like
clairvoyants."

"Why, what a queer notion that is for you, wife!" laughed the doctor,
and thought no more of it.

Hetty's first interview with Rachel was a constrained one. Nothing in
Hetty's life had prepared her for intercourse with so finely organized a
creature: she felt afraid to speak, lest she should wound her; her own
habits of thought and subjects of interest seemed too earthy to be
mentioned in this presence; she was vaguely conscious that all Rachel's
being was set to finer issues than her own. She found in this an
unspeakable attraction; and yet it also withheld her at every point and
made her dumb. In spite of these conflicting emotions, she wanted to
love Rachel, to help her, to be near her; and she went again and again,
until the constraint wore off, and a very genuine affection grew up
between them. Never, after the first day, had she felt any peculiar
embarrassment under Rachel's gaze, and her memory of it had nearly died
away, when one day, late in the autumn, it was suddenly revived with
added intensity. It was a day on which Hetty had been feeling unusually
sad. Even by Rachel's bedside she could not quite throw off the sadness.
Unconsciously, she had been sitting for a long time silent. As she
looked up, she met Rachel's eyes fixed full on hers, with the same