turn was indefinitely postponed by Mr. Redmain's
illness, she ventured at last in her anxiety upon a daring measure: she
wrote to Mr. Wardour, telling him she had reason to fear things were
not going well with Letty Helmer, and suggesting, in the gentlest way,
whether it might not now be time to let bygones be bygones, and make
some inquiry concerning her.

To this letter Godfrey returned no answer. For all her denial, he had
never ceased to believe that Mary had been Letty's accomplice
throughout that miserable affair; and the very name--the Letty and the
Helmer--stung him to the quick. He took it, therefore, as a piece of
utter presumption in Mary to write to him about Letty, and that in the
tone, as ho interpreted it, of one reading him a lesson of duty. But,
while he was thus indignant with Mary, he was also vexed with Letty
that she should not herself have written to him if she was in any need,
forgetting that he had never hinted at any door of communication open
between him and her. His heart quivered at the thought that she might
be in distress; he had known for certain, he said, the fool would bring
her to misery! For himself, the thought of Letty was an ever-open
wound--with an ever-present pain, now dull and aching, now keen and
stinging. The agony of her desertion, he said, would never cease
gnawing at his heart until it was laid in the grave; like most heathen
Christians, he thought of death as the end of all the joys, sorrows,
and interests generally of this life. But, while thus he brooded, a
fierce and evil joy awoke in him at the thought that now at last the
expected hour had come when he would heap coals of fire on her head. He
was still fool enough to think of her as having forsaken him, although
he had never given her ground for believing, and she had never had
conceit enough to imagine, that he cared the least for her person. If
he could but let her have a glimmer of what she had lost in losing him!
She knew what she had gained in Tom Helmer.

He passed a troubled night, dreamed painfully, and started awake to
renewed pain. Before morning he had made up his mind to take the first
train to London. But he thought far more of being her deliverer than of
bringing her deliverance.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

GODFREY AND LETTY.

It was a sad, gloomy, kindless November night, when Godfrey arrived in
London. The wind was cold, the pavements were cold, the houses seemed
to be not only cold but feeling it