She had gone through a sore time. To have made Godfrey unhappy, made her miserable; but how was she to help it? She belonged to Tom! Not once did she entertain the thought of ceasing to be Tom's. She did not even say to herself, what would Tom do if she forgot and forsook him—and for what he could not help! for having left her because death took him away! But what was she to do? She must not remain where she was. No more must she tell his mother why she went.
She wrote to Mary, and told her she could not stay much longer. They were very kind, she said, but she must be gone before Godfrey came back.
Mary suspected the truth. The fact that Letty did not give her any reason was almost enough. The supposition also rendered intelligible the strange mixture of misery and hardness in Godfrey's behavior at the time of Letty's old mishap. She answered, begging her to keep her mind easy about the future, and her friend informed of whatever concerned her.
This much from Mary was enough to set Letty at comparative ease. She began to recover strength, and was able to write a letter to Godfrey, to leave where he would find it, in his study.
It was a lovely letter—the utterance of a simple, childlike spirit—with much in it, too, I confess, that was but prettily childish. She poured out on Godfrey the affection of a womanchild. She told him what a reverence and love he had been to her always; told him, too, that it would change her love into fear, perhaps something worse, if he tried to make her forget Tom. She told him he was much too grand for her to dare love him in that way, but she could look up to him like an angel—only he must not come between her and Tom. Nothing could be plainer, simpler, honester, or stronger, than the way the little woman wrote her mind to the great man. Had he been worthy of her, he might even yet, with her help, have got above his passion in a grand way, and been a great man indeed. But, as so many do, he only sat upon himself, kept himself down, and sank far below his passion.
When he went to his study the day after his return, he saw the letter. His heart leaped like a wild thing in a trap at sight of the ill-shaped, childish writing; but—will my lady reader believe it?—the first thought that shot through it was—"She shall find it too late! I am not one to be left and taken at will!" When he read it, however, it was with a curling lip of scorn at the childishness of the creature to whom he had offered the heart of Godfrey Wardour. Instead of admiring the lovely devotion of the girl-widow to her boy-husband, he scorned himself for having dreamed of a creature who could not only love a fool like Tom Helmer, but go on loving him after he was dead, and that even when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he loved her. It was thus the devil befooled him. Perhaps the worst devil a man can be posessed withal, is himself. In mere madness, the man is beside himself; but in this case he is inside himself; the presiding, indwelling, inspiring sprit of him is himself, and that is the hardest of all to cast out. Godfrey rose form the reading of that letter cured, as he called it. But it was a cure that left the wound open as a door to the entrance of evil things. He tore the letter into a thousand pieces, and throw them into the empty grate—not even showed it the respect of burning it with fire.
Mary had got her affairs settled, and was again in the old place, the hallowed temple of so many holy memories. I do not forget it was a shop I call a temple. In that shop God had been worshiped with holiest worship—that is, obedience—and would be again. Neither do I forget that the devil had been worshiped there too—in what temple is he not? He has fallen like lightning from heaven, but has not yet been cast out of the earth. In that shop, however, he would be worshiped no more for a season.
At once she wrote to Letty, saying the room which had been hers was at her service as soon as she pleased to occupy it: she would take her father's.
Letty breathed a deep breath of redemption, and made haste to accept the offer. But to let Mrs. Wardour know her resolve was a severe strain on her courage.
I will not give the conversation that followed her announcement that she was going to visit Mary Marston. Her aunt met it with scorn and indignation. Ingratitude, laziness, love of low company, all the old words of offense she threw afresh in her face. But Letty could not help being pleased to find that her aunt's storm no longer swamped her boat. When she began, however, to abuse Mary, calling her a low creature, who actually gave up an independent position to put herself at the beck and call of a fine lady, Letty grew angry.