Nor was even debt the worst that now oppressed her. For, possibly
from the fall, but more from the prolonged want of suitable
nourishment and wise treatment, after that terrible night, the
baby grew worse. Many were the tears the sleepless mother shed
over the sallow face and wasted limbs of her slumbering treasure
--her one antidote to countless sorrows; and many were the foolish
means she tried to restore his sinking vitality.
Mary had written to her, and she had written to Mary; but she had
said nothing of the straits to which she was reduced; that would
have been to bring blame upon Tom. But Mary, with her fine human
instinct, felt that things must be going worse with her than
before; and, when she found that her return was indefinitely
postponed by Mr. Redmain's illness, she ventured at last in her
anxiety upon a daring measure: she wrote to Mr. Wardour, telling
him she had reason to fear things were not going well with Letty
Helmer, and suggesting, in the gentlest way, whether it might not
now be time to let bygones be bygones, and make some inquiry
concerning her.
To this letter Godfrey returned no answer. For all her denial, he
had never ceased to believe that Mary had been Letty's accomplice
throughout that miserable affair; and the very name--the Letty
and the Helmer--stung him to the quick. He took it, therefore, as
a piece of utter presumption in Mary to write to him about Letty,
and that in the tone, as ho interpreted it, of one reading him a
lesson of duty.
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