thought, have
overtaken him long before now! But, perhaps, she had fainted outright,
and lain longer than she knew at the kitchen-door; and when she started
to follow him, Tom was already at home! Alas, alas! she was lost
utterly!

The footpath came to an end, and she was on the high-road. There was
the inn where Tom generally put up! It was silent as the grave. The
clang of a horseshoe striking a stone came through the frosty air from
far along the road. Her heart sank into the depths of the infinite sea
that encircles the soul, and, for the second time that night, Death
passing by gave her an alms of comfort, and she lay insensible on the
border of the same highway along which Tom, on his bay mare, went
singing home.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MORNING.

At Thornwick, Tom had been descried in the yard, by the spying organs
of one of the servants--a woman not very young, and not altogether
innocent of nightly interviews. Through the small window of her closet
she had seen, and having seen she watched--not without hope she might
be herself the object of the male presence, which she recognized as
that of Tom Helmer, whom almost everybody knew. In a few minutes,
however, Letty appeared behind him, and therewith a throb of evil joy
shot through her bosom: what a chance! what a good joke! what a thing
for her to find out Miss Letty; to surprise her naughty secret! to have
her in her power! She would have no choice but tell her everything--and
then what privileges would be hers! and what larks they two would have
together, helping each other! She had not a thought of betraying her:
there would be no fun in that! not the less would she encourage a
little the fear that she might, for it would be as a charm in her bosom
to work her will withal!--To make sure of Letty and her secret, partly
also in pure delight of mischief, and enjoyment of the power to tease,
she stole down stairs, and locked the kitchen door--the bolt of which,
for reasons of her own, she kept well oiled; then sat down in an old
rocking-chair, and waited--I can not say watched, for she fell fast
asleep. Letty lifted the latch almost too softly for her to have heard
had she been awake; but on the door-step Letty, had she been capable of
listening, might have heard her snoring.

When the young woman awoke in the cold gray of the morning, and came to
herself, compunction seized her. Opening the door softly, she went out
and searched everywhere; then, having