Why? Why? Why had God ever found such favor in her in preference to them? That was all she asked herself.
One day a letter lay on her plate at breakfast. It was readdressed from Bridnorth and was in Liddiard's handwriting. For long she debated whether she would open it or not. What memories might it not revive? What wound might it not open, even the scar of which she could hardly trace by now?
Her child had no father. Touch with Liddiard's mind again in those moments might make her wish he had; might make her wish she had a hand to hold when her hour should come; might make her need the presence of some one close that she might not feel so completely alone.
Yet even nursing these thoughts, her fingers had torn the envelope without volition; her eyes had turned to the paper without intent.
"I have heard from your sister Jane," he wrote. "She tells me she thinks I ought to know what is happening to you. She writes bitterly in every word as though I had cast you off to bear the burden of this alone. God knows that is not true. In the first letter I wrote you after I left Bridnorth, if you have kept it, you will find how earnestly I assured you I would, in such an event, do all I could. Where are you and why have you never appealed to me? Surely I could have helped and so willingly I would. Wherever you are, won't you let me come and see you? One of these days, of course without mentioning your name, I shall tell my wife everything. I have some feeling in my heart she will understand."
That same day, Mary answered his letter.
"Please take no notice of my sister Jane. She would punish you as she has punished me. That is her view of what has happened. I know you would do all you could. It hurts me a little to hear you think I should doubt it. Do not worry about me. I am away in the country and intensely happy. Never was I so happy. Never I expect will I be quite so happy again. You have nothing to fret yourself about. It would cast some kind of shadow over all this happiness if I thought you were. You have no cause for it. I shall always be grateful to you. I do not put my address at the head of this letter, because somehow I fear you would come to see me, however strong my wishes were that you should not."
"'Ee's thoughtful, Maidy," Mrs. Peverell said to her when she returned from posting her letter in Lonesome Ford.
"Am I?"
"'Ee've had a letter from him."