She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to see Mr. Wardour.
It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.
"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "—I come altogether without authority—but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married—at least so soon."
"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold restraint.
"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer. But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."
"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault—all and entirely her own fault."
"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert. That is not how we are treated ourselves."
"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply.—She must marry the fellow, or her character is gone."
"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked in having a talk with a young man after dark."
"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in—certain strata of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in that to which either of them belongs."