ld introduce her to
what Milton says in his "Areopagitica" concerning good books. There,
for her sake, then, he sat, in mental state, expectant; but sat in
vain. When they met at tea, then, in the presence of his mother, with
embarrassment and broken utterance, she did thank him.

"O Cousin Godfrey!" she said, and ceased; then, "It is so much more
than I deserve, I dare hardly thank you." After another pause, with a
shake of her pretty head, as if she would toss aside her hair, or the
tears out of her eyes, "I don't know--I seem to have no right to thank
you; I ought not to have such a splendid present. Indeed, I don't
deserve it. You would not give it me if you knew how naughty I am."

These broken sentences were by both mother and son altogether
misinterpreted. The mother, now hearing for the first time of Godfrey's
present, was filled with jealousy, and began to revolve thoughts of
dire disquietude: was the hussy actually beginning to gain her point,
and steal from her the heart of her son? Was it in the girl's blood to
wrong her? The father of her had wronged her: she would take care his
daughter should not! She had taken a viper to her bosom! Who was _she_,
to wriggle herself into an old family and property? Had _she_ been born
to such things? She would teach her who she was! When dependents began
to presume, it was time they had a lesson.

Letty could not bear the sight of the books and their shelves; the very
beauty of the bindings was a reproach to her. From the misery of this
fresh burden, this new stirring of her sense of hypocrisy, she began to
wish herself anywhere out of the house, and away from Thornwick. It was
torture to her to think how she had deceived Cousin Godfrey at the hut;
and throughout the night, across the darkness, she felt, though she
could not see, the books gazing at her, like an embodied conscience,
from the wall of her chamber. Twenty times that night she started from
her sleep, saying, "I will go where they shall never see me"; then rose
with the dawn, and set herself to the hardest work she could find.

The next day was Sunday, and they all went to church. Letty felt that
Tom was there, too, but she never raised her eyes to glance at him.

He had been looking out in vain for a sight of her--now from the
oak-tree, now from his bay mare's back, as he haunted the roads about
Thornwick, now from the window of the little public-house where the
path across the fields joined the main road