He brought
her to the nearest point not within sight of any of the windows,
and, there leaving her, set out at a rapid pace for the inn where
he had put up his mare.
When Tom was gone, and the bare night, a diffused conscience, all
about her, Letty, with a strange fear at her heart, like one in a
churchyard, with the ghost-hour at hand, and feeling like "a
guilty thing surprised," although she had done nothing wrong in
its mere self, stole back to the door of the kitchen, longing for
the shelter of her own room, as never exile for his fatherland.
She had left the door an inch ajar, that she might run the less
risk of making a noise in opening it; but ere she reached it, the
moon shining full upon it, she saw plainly, and her heart turned
sick when she saw, that it was closed. Between cold and terror
she shuddered from head to foot, and stood staring.
Recovering a little, she said to herself some draught must have
blown it to. If so, there was much danger that the noise had been
heard; but, in any case, there was no time to lose. She glided
swiftly to it. She lifted the latch softly--but, horror of
horrors! in vain. The door was locked. She was shut out. She must
lie or confess! And what lie would serve? Poor Letty! And yet,
for all her dismay, her terror, her despair that night, in her
innocence, she never once thought of the worst danger in which
she stood!
The least perilous, where no safe way was left, would now have
been to let the simple truth appear; Letty ought immediately to
have knocked at the door, and, should that have proved
unavailing, to have broken her aunt's window even, to gain
hearing and admittance.
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