"I saw them together more than once, and they seemed—well, on very good terms."
"Then it is all over with him!" cried Mary, in despair. "O Letty! what is to be done? Why didn't you tell me before? He'll be madly in love with her by this time! They always are."
"But where's the harm, Mary? She's a very handsome lady, and of a good family."
"We're all of good enough family," said Mary, a little petulantly. "But that Miss Yolland—Letty—that Miss Yolland—she's a bad woman, Letty."
"I never heard you say such a hard word of anybody before, Mary! It frightens me to hear you."
"It's a true word of her, Letty."
"How can you be so sure?"
Mary was silent. There was that about Letty that made the maiden shrink from telling the married woman what she knew. Besides, in so far as Tom had been concerned, she could not bring herself, even without mentioning his name, to talk of him to his wife: there was no evil to be prevented and no good to be done by it. If Letty was ever to know those passages in his life, she must hear them first in high places, and from the lips of the repentant man himself!
"I can not tell you, Letty," she said. "You know the two bonds of friendship are the right of silence and the duty of speech. I dare say you have some things which, truly as I know you love me, you neither wish nor feel at liberty to tell me."
Letty thought of what had so lately passed between her and her cousin Godfrey, and felt almost guilty. She never thought of one of the many things Tom had done or said that had cut her to the heart; those had no longer any existence. They were swallowed in the gulf of forgetful love—dismissed even as God casts the sins of his children behind his back: behind God's back is just nowhere. She did not answer, and again there was silence for a time, during which Mary kept walking about the room, her hands clasped behind her, the fingers interlaced, and twisted with a strain almost fierce.