ke a small deluge. Like
some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood
might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not
cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is
true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not
exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a
bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and
unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and
excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him. Mrs. Wardour was
a lady, as the ladies of this world go, but a poor lady for the kingdom
of heaven: I should wonder much if she ranked as more than a very
common woman there.

The next day all was quiet; and a visit paid Mrs. Wardour by a favorite
sister whom she had not seen for months, set Letty at such liberty as
she seldom had. In the afternoon she took the book Godfrey had given
her, in which he had set her one of Milton's smaller poems to study,
and sought the shadow of the Durnmelling oak.

It was a lovely autumn day, the sun glorious as ever in the memory of
Abraham, or the author of Job, or the builder of the scaled pyramid at
Sakkara. But there was a keenness in the air notwithstanding, which
made Letty feel a little sad without knowing why, as she seated herself
to the task Cousin Godfrey had set her. She, as well as his mother,
heartily wished he were home. She was afraid of him, it is true; but in
how different a way from that in which she was afraid of his mother!
His absence did not make her feel free, and to escape from his mother
was sometimes the whole desire of her day.

She was trying hard, not altogether successfully, to fix her attention
on her task, when a yellow leaf dropped on the very line she was poring
over. Thinking how soon the trees would be bare once more, she brushed
the leaf away, and resumed her lesson.

"To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,"

she had just read once more, when down fell a second tree-leaf on the
book-leaf. Again she brushed it away, and read to the end of the sonnet:

"Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure."

What Letty's thoughts about the sonnet were, I can not tell: how fix
thought indefinite in words defined? But her angel might well have
thought what a weary road she had to walk before she gained that
entrance. But for all of us the road _has_ to be walked, every step,
and the utte