"You see Godfrey was so very good to me, and I do miss him so," sighed the speaker at last.
It was perhaps hardly the way in which a devoted wife would have spoken of a husband only six weeks dead, but it exactly expressed the truth. Godfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily accepted as a lover by a barely emancipated schoolgirl who did not know what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been contentedly passed under his fostering care.
Had he lived, and had children been born to the pair, it is easy to conjecture the sort of woman Leonore would have developed into; as it was, she had grown more mentally and spiritually in the past six weeks than in the whole course of her previous existence.
And then came the passionate desire for expression, the helpless sense of an inner burden too heavy to be borne alone. It was lucky it was Valentine Purcell who came in Leo's way: the dam must have burst somewhere.
"You won't tell any one, Val?"
"Rather not. I should think not. I should just say not, Leo." Fervour gathered with each assurance.
"They wouldn't understand, would they?" faltered she.
"Of course they wouldn't. People never do," asseverated he.
"And you mustn't be vexed if I am still shut up when you come to see us, because I know Sue means this to go on for ever so long. Sue thinks it only proper, you know. She is not in the least unkind, she believes she is doing just what I would wish, and she would be awfully ashamed of me if I wished anything else," continued Leo, jumping across a puddle with a freer and lighter step than she had come out with, or indeed trod with, since coming back to the Abbey. "Up the bank, Val. Go first, and I'll follow. Oh, no, we won't turn back; it is only here that the water lies; I often come along this path, and it is quite dry directly you are round the corner."
"You often come here? When? Do you come in the mornings, or afternoons?"—he threw over his shoulder, still leading the way.