It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was
not thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.
"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without
authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her
engagement with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at
least so soon."
"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold
restraint.
"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr.
Helmer. But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that
unhappy accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own
mind."
"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault
--all and entirely her own fault."
"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon
desert. That is not how we are treated ourselves."
"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is
different. I am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty
sharply.--She _must_ marry the fellow, or her character is
gone."
"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her
to have anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and
a foolish thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl,
and you know country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there
is nothing wicked in having a talk with a young man after dark."
"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain
strata of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do
not hold in that to which either of them belongs.
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