| Thus, all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor. | Так и Гепзиба, строя планы торговли, постоянно питала в душе надежду, что фортуна устроит ей какой-нибудь необыкновенный сюрприз. |
| For example, an uncle-who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since-might yet return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and oriental shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unreckonable riches. | Например, дядя, отплывший в Индию пятьдесят лет назад и пропавший без вести, может вдруг вернуться, сделать ее утешением своей глубокой и очень дряхлой старости, украсить ее жемчугом, алмазами, восточными шалями и тюрбанами и завещать ей свое несметное богатство. |
| Or the member of parliament, now at the head of the English branch of the family-with which the elder stock, on this side of the Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two centuries-this eminent gentleman might invite Hepzibah to quit the ruinous House of Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with her kindred at Pyncheon Hall. | Или член парламента, глава английской ветви ее рода - с которой старшее поколение по эту сторону Атлантического океана не имело никаких сношений в течение последних двух столетий, -может написать Гепзибе, чтобы она оставила ветхий Дом с семью шпилями и переехала жить к родным в Пинчон-холл. |
| But, for reasons the most imperative, she could not yield to his request. | Впрочем, по важным причинам она не смогла бы принять это приглашение. |
| It was more probable, therefore, that the descendants of a Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia, in some past generation, and became a great planter there-hearing of Hepzibah's destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity of character with which their Virginian mixture must have enriched the New England blood-would send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of repeating the favor annually. | Поэтому гораздо вероятнее, что потомки Пинчона, которые когда-то переселились в Вирджинию и стали там богатыми плантаторами, узнав о жалкой участи Г епзибы, пришлют ей вексель в тысячу долларов с обещанием высылать по стольку же ежегодно. |
| Or-and surely anything so undeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable anticipation-the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County might finally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons; so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah would build a palace, and look down from its highest tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share of the ancestral territory. |