There seems to be a hope as well as a courage born of despair:
immortal, yet inconstant children of a death-doomed sire, both
were now departing. If Tom had come this way, she must, she
thought, have overtaken him long before now! But, perhaps, she
had fainted outright, and lain longer than she knew at the
kitchen-door; and when she started to follow him, Tom was already
at home! Alas, alas! she was lost utterly!
The footpath came to an end, and she was on the high-road. There
was the inn where Tom generally put up! It was silent as the
grave. The clang of a horseshoe striking a stone came through the
frosty air from far along the road. Her heart sank into the
depths of the infinite sea that encircles the soul, and, for the
second time that night, Death passing by gave her an alms of
comfort, and she lay insensible on the border of the same highway
along which Tom, on his bay mare, went singing home.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MORNING.
At Thornwick, Tom had been descried in the yard, by the spying
organs of one of the servants--a woman not very young, and not
altogether innocent of nightly interviews. Through the small
window of her closet she had seen, and having seen she watched--
not without hope she might be herself the object of the male
presence, which she recognized as that of Tom Helmer, whom almost
everybody knew. In a few minutes, however, Letty appeared behind
him, and therewith a throb of evil joy shot through her bosom:
what a chance! what a good joke! what a thing for her to find out
Miss Letty; to surprise her naughty secret! to have her in her
power! She would have no choice but tell her everything--and then
what privileges would be hers! and what larks they two would have
together, helping each other! She had not a thought of betraying
her: there would be no fun in that! not the less would she
encourage a little the fear that she might, for it would be as a
charm in her bosom to work her will withal!--To make sure of
Letty and her secret, partly also in pure delight of mischief,
and enjoyment of the power to tease, she stole down stairs, and
locked the kitchen door--the bolt of which, for reasons of her
own, she kept well oiled; then sat down in an old rocking-chair,
and waited--I can not say watched, for she fell fast asleep.
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