A certain mysterious change
seems to pass over some of them; they are not the same somehow,
and you have to make your acquaintance with them all over again
from the beginning."
"I shouldn't think such people's acquaintance worth making over
again," said Letty.
"How can you tell what it may be worth?" said Mary, "--they are
so different from what they were? Their friendship may now be one
that won't change so easily."
"Ah! don't be hard on me, Mary. I have never ceased to love you."
"I am _so_ glad!" answered Mary. "People don't generally
take much to me--at least, not to come _near_ me. But you
can _be_ friends without _having_ friends," she added,
with a sententiousness she had inherited.
"I don't quite understand you," said Letty, sadly; "but, then, I
never could quite, you know. Tom finds me very stupid."
These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a
probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she
shrunk from any approach to confidences with _one_ of a
married pair. To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a
breach of unity, except, indeed, that were already, and
irreparably, broken. To encourage in any married friend the
placing of a confidence that excludes the other, is to encourage
that friend's self-degradation. But neither was this a fault to
which Letty could have been tempted; she loved her Tom too much
for it: with all her feebleness, there was in Letty not a little
of childlike greatness, born of faith.
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