n the face of all gainsayers. But in Godfrey Wardour love and
pride went hand in hand. Not for a moment would he will to love a girl
capable of being interested, if nothing more, in Tom Helmer. It must be
allowed, however, that it would have been a terrible torture to see
Letty about the place, to pass her on the stair, to come upon her in
the garden, to sit with her in the room, and know all the time that it
was the test of Tom's worth and her constancy. Even were she to give up
Tom, satisfied that she did not love him, she could be nothing more to
him, even in the relation in which he had allowed her to think she
stood to him. She had behaved too deceitfully, too heartlessly, too
ungratefully, too _vulgarly_ for that! Yet was his heart torn every
time the vision of the gentle girl rose before "that inward eye,"
which, for long, could no more be to him "the bliss of solitude"; when
he saw those hazel depths looking half anxious, half sorrowful in his
face, as, with sadly comic sense of her stupidity, she listened while
he explained or read something he loved. But no; nothing else would do
than act the mere honest guardian, compelling them to marry, no matter
how slight or transient the shadow the man had cast over her reputation!

Mary returned with a sense of utter failure.

But before long she came to the conclusion that all was right between
Tom and Letty, and that the cause of her anxiety had lain merely in
Letty's loss of animal spirits.

Now and then Mary tried to turn Tom's attention a little toward the
duty of religion: Tom received the attempt with gentle amusement and a
little _badinage_. It was all very well for girls! Indeed, he had made
the observation that girls who had no religion were "strong-minded,"
and that he could not endure! Like most men, he was so well satisfied
with himself, that he saw no occasion to take trouble to be anything
better than he was. Never suspecting what a noble creature he was meant
to be, he never saw what a poor creature he was. In his own eyes he was
a man any girl might be proud to marry. He had not yet, however, sunk
to the depth of those who, having caught a glimpse of nobility, confess
wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the noble they see
they are bound to be; or, worse still, perhaps, admit the obligation,
but move no inch to fulfill it. It seems to me that such must one day
make acquaintance with _essential_ misery--a thing of which they have
no conce