Letty's arms and consoled her in his absence, was only further cause of
strife between her and her husband. Often, as I came down the street and
saw the pretty outside of the cottage, waving with creepers, and hedged
about with thorns, whose gay berries decked it as if for a festival, I
thought of what a good old preacher among the Friends once said to me:
"Sarah, thee will live to find shows are often seems; thee sees many a
quiet house, with gay windows, that is hell inside."

I soon found that I must stay all winter at Slepington. I had a hard task
before me,--to try and teach Letty that she had no right to neglect her
own duties because her husband ignored his. But six months of continual
dropping seemed to wear a tiny channel of perception; and my presence, as
well as the efforts we made together to preserve order, if not serenity,
in the house, restored a certain dim hope to Letty's mind, and I began to
see that the "purification by fire" was doing its work, in slow pain, but
to a sure end.

Selfish as it was, I cannot say that I felt sorry to return to Jo, who
wrote for me in April, urging me to come as soon as I could, for Mr.
Waring had fallen from the mill-wall and broken his leg, and the workmen,
in their confusion, had carried him to her house, and she wanted me to
help her. I learned, on reaching Valley Mills, that the new building on
the island had not been completed far enough to resist a heavy freshet,
that had swept away part of the first story, where the mortar was not yet
hardened; and it was in traversing these wet stones to ascertain the
extent of the damage that Mr. Waring had slipped, and, unable to recover
his footing, fallen on a heap of stones and received his injury.

My first question to Josephine was, "Where is Mr. Waring's mother?"

"He would not send for her, Sally," said she, "because she is not well,
and he feared to startle her."

"H'm!" said I, very curtly.

Josephine looked at me with innocent, grave eyes,--dear, simple child!--
and yet, for anybody but herself she would have been sufficiently
discerning. This love seemed to have remodelled her nature, to have taken
from her all the serpent's wisdom, to have destroyed her common sense, and
distorted her view of everything in which Arthur Waring was concerned. She
had certainly got on very fast in my absence. I had returned too late.

I had little to do with the care of the invalid; that devolved on Jo; my
offers of service were