reason was almost enough. The supposition also rendered intelligible
the strange mixture of misery and hardness in Godfrey's behavior at the
time of Letty's old mishap. She answered, begging her to keep her mind
easy about the future, and her friend informed of whatever concerned
her.

This much from Mary was enough to set Letty at comparative ease. She
began to recover strength, and was able to write a letter to Godfrey,
to leave where he would find it, in his study.

It was a lovely letter--the utterance of a simple, childlike
spirit--with much in it, too, I confess, that was but prettily
childish. She poured out on Godfrey the affection of a womanchild. She
told him what a reverence and love he had been to her always; told him,
too, that it would change her love into fear, perhaps something worse,
if he tried to make her forget Tom. She told him he was much too grand
for her to dare love him in that way, but she could look up to him like
an angel--only he must not come between her and Tom. Nothing could be
plainer, simpler, honester, or stronger, than the way the little woman
wrote her mind to the great man. Had he been worthy of her, he might
even yet, with her help, have got above his passion in a grand way, and
been a great man indeed. But, as so many do, he only sat upon himself,
kept himself down, and sank far below his passion.

When he went to his study the day after his return, he saw the letter.
His heart leaped like a wild thing in a trap at sight of the
ill-shaped, childish writing; but--will my lady reader believe it?--the
first thought that shot through it was--"She shall find it too late! I
am not one to be left and taken at will!" When he read it, however, it
was with a curling lip of scorn at the childishness of the creature to
whom he had offered the heart of Godfrey Wardour. Instead of admiring
the lovely devotion of the girl-widow to her boy-husband, he scorned
himself for having dreamed of a creature who could not only love a fool
like Tom Helmer, but go on loving him after he was dead, and that even
when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he loved her. It
was thus the devil befooled him. Perhaps the worst devil a man can be
posessed withal, is himself. In mere madness, the man is beside
himself; but in this case he is inside himself; the presiding,
indwelling, inspiring sprit of him is himself, and that is the hardest
of all to cast out. Godfrey rose form the reading of that lette