een seated under it many minutes before Godfrey caught sight of
her from his horse's back: knowing his mother was gone to Testbridge,
he yielded to an urgent longing, took his horse to the stable, and
crossed the grass to where she sat.

Letty was thinking of Tom--what else was there of her own to
do?--thinking like a child, looking up into the cloud-flecked sky, and
thinking Tom was somewhere there, though she could not see him: she
must be good and patient, that she might go up to him, as he could not
come down to her--if he could, he would have come long ago! All the
enchantment of the first days of her love had come back upon the young
widow; all the ill that had crept in between had failed from out her
memory, as the false notes in music melt in the air that carries the
true ones across ravine and river, meadow and grove, to the listening
ear. Letty lived in a dream of her husband--in heaven, "yet not from
her"--such a dream of bliss and hope as in itself went far to make up
for all her sorrows.

She was sitting with her back toward the tree and her face to
Thornwick, and yet she did not see Godfrey till he was within a few
yards of her. She smiled, expecting his kind greeting, but was startled
to hear from behind her instead the voice of a lady greeting him. She
turned her head involuntarily: there was the head of Sepia rising above
the breach in the ha-ha, and Godfrey had turned aside and run to give
her his hand.

Now Letty knew Sepia by sight, from the evening she had spent at the
old hall; more of her she knew nothing. From the mind of Tom, in his
illness, her baleful influence had vanished like an evil dream, and
Mary had not thought it necessary to let him know how falsely,
contemptuously, and contemptibly, she had behaved toward him. Letty,
therefore, had no feeling toward Sepia but one of admiration for her
grace and beauty, which she could appreciate the more that they were so
different from her own.

"Thank you," said Sepia, holding fast by Godfrey's hand, and coming up
with a little pant. "What a lovely day it is for your haymaking! How
can you afford the time to play knight-errant to a distressed damsel?"

"The hay is nearly independent of my presence," replied Godfrey. "Sun
and wind have done their parts too well for my being of much use."

"Take me with you to see how they are getting on. I am as fond of hay
as Bottom in his translation."

She had learned Godfrey's love of literature, and kne