. To Tom she behaved very sweetly,
but more like a tender sister than a lover, and Mary began to doubt
whether her heart was altogether Tom's. From mention of approaching
marriage, she turned with a nervous, uneasy haste. Had the insight
which the enforced calmness of suffering sometimes brings opened her
eyes to anything in Tom? The doubt filled Mary with anxiety. She
thought and thought, until--delicate matter as it was to meddle with,
and small encouragement as Godfrey Wardour had given her to expect
sympathy--she yet made up her mind to speak to him on the subject--and
the rather that she was troubled at the unworthiness of his behavior to
Letty: gladly would she have him treat her with the generosity
essential to the idea she had formed of him.

She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to
see Mr. Wardour.

It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not
thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.

"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without
authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement
with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at least so soon."

"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold restraint.

"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer.
But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy
accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."

"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault--all
and entirely her own fault."

"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert.
That is not how we are treated ourselves."

"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I
am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply.--She _must_
marry the fellow, or her character is gone."

"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have
anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish
thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know
country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked
in having a talk with a young man after dark."

"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain strata
of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in
that to which either of them belongs."

"It seems to me a pity they should not, then," said Mary. "I know
nothing of such matters, but, sure