s love is not founded upon any merit,
rests only on being and need, and the worth that is yet unborn.

The Redmains were again at Durnmelling--had been for some weeks; and
Sepia had taken care that she and Godfrey should meet--on the footpath
to Testbridge, in the field accessible by the breach in the ha-ha--here
and there and anywhere suitable for a little detention and talk that
should seem accidental, and be out of sight. Nor was Godfrey the man to
be insensible to the influence of such a woman, brought to bear at
close quarters. A man less vulnerable--I hate the word, but it is the
right one with Sepia concerned, for she was, in truth, an enemy--might
perhaps have yielded room to the suspicion that these meetings were not
all so accidental as they appeared, and as Sepia treated them; but no
glimmer of such a thought passed through the mind of Godfrey. He knew
nothing of all that my readers know to Sepia's disadvantage, and her
eyes were enough to subdue most men from the first--for a time at
least. Had it not been for the return of Letty, she would by this time
have had him her slave: nothing but slavery could it ever be to love a
woman like her, who gave no love in return, only exercised power. But
although he was always glad to meet her, and his heart had begun to
beat a little faster at sight of her approach, the glamour of her
presence was nearly destroyed by the arrival of Letty; and Sepia was
more than sharp enough to perceive a difference in the expression of
his eyes the next time she met him. At the very first glance she
suspected some hostile influence at work--intentionally hostile, for
persons with a consciousness like Sepia's are always imagining enemies.
And as the two worst enemies she could have were the truth and a woman,
she was alternately jealous and terrified: the truth and a woman
together, she had not yet begun to fear; that would, indeed, be too
much!

She soon found there was a young woman at Thornwick, who had but just
arrived; and ere long she learned who she was--one, indeed, who had
already a shadowy existence in her life--was it possible the shadow
should be now taking solidity, and threatening to foil her? Not once
did it occur to her that, were it so, there would be retribution in it.
She had heard of Tom's death through "The Firefly," which had a kind,
extravagant article about him, but she had not once thought of his
widow--and there she was, a hedge across the path she wanted to g