to Testbridge: but not once
had he caught a glimpse of her.

He had seated himself where he could not fail to see her if she were in
the Thornwick pew. How ill she looked! His heart swelled with
indignation.

"They are cruel to her," he said; "that is plain. Poor girl, they will
kill her! She is a pearl in the oyster-maw of Thornwick. This will
never do; I _must_ see her somehow!"

If at this crisis Letty had but had a real friend to strengthen and
advise her, much suffering might have been spared her, for never was
there a more teachable girl. She was, indeed, only too ready to be
advised, too ready to accept for true whatever friendship offered
itself. None but the friend who will strengthen us to stand, is worthy
of the name. Such a friend Mary would have been, but Letty did not yet
know what she needed. The unrest of her conscience made her shrink from
one who was sure to side with that conscience, and help it to trouble
her. It was sympathy Letty longed for, not strength, and therefore she
was afraid of Mary. She came to see her, as she had promised, the
Sunday after that disastrous visit; but the weather was still uncertain
and gusty, and she found both her and Godfrey in the parlor; nor did
Letty give her a chance of speaking to her alone. The poor girl had now
far more on her mind that needed help than then when she went in search
of it, but she would seek it no more from her! For, the more she
thought, the surer she felt that Mary would insist on her making a
disclosure of the whole foolish business to Mrs. Wardour, and would
admit neither her own fear nor her aunt's harshness as reason
sufficient to the contrary. "More than that," thought Letty, "I can't
be sure she wouldn't go, in spite of me, and tell her all about it! and
what would become of me then? I should be worse off a hundred times
than if I had told her myself."

CHAPTER XL

WILLIAM MARSTON.

The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of
altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles
are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the
wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds
rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large
ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down
by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and
it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and
fears, t