No good
is ever lost. The heavenly porter was departed, but had left the
door wide. She had seen him but once since Letty's marriage, and
then his salutation was like that of a dead man in a dream; for
in his sore heart he still imagined her the confidante of Letty's
deception.
But the shadow of her father's absence swallowed all the other
shadows. The air of warmth and peace and conscious safety which
had hitherto surrounded her was gone, and in its place cold,
exposure, and annoyance. Between them her father and she had
originated a mutually protective atmosphere of love; when that
failed, the atmosphere of earthly relation rushed in and
enveloped her. The moment of her father's departure, malign
influences, inimical to the very springs of her life,
concentrated themselves upon her: it was the design of John
Turnbull that she should not be comfortable so long as she did
not irrevocably cast in her lot with his family; and, the rest in
the shop being mostly creatures of his own choice, by a sort of
implicit understanding they proceeded to make her uncomfortable.
So long as they confined themselves to silence, neglect, and
general exclusion, Mary heeded little their behavior, for no
intercourse with them, beyond that of external good offices,
could be better than indifferent to her; but, when they advanced
to positive interference, her position became indeed hard to
endure.
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