Once or twice,
in a quieter interval, he looked at her pitifully, and seemed
about to speak; but the back-surging fever carried far away the
word of love for which she listened so eagerly. The doctor came
daily, but Tom grew worse, and Letty could not get well.
CHAPTER XL.
GODFREY AND SEPIA.
When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at
Durnmelling, in the expectation of joining them in London within
a fortnight at latest. The illness of Mr. Redmain, however,
caused her stay to be prolonged, and she was worn out with
_ennui_. The self she was so careful over was not by any
means good company: not seldom during her life had she found
herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of
suicide or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would
even, occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine,
go for a solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in
itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor
possibility of falling in with some distraction. But the hope was
not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere
underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry?
She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked
about him, and often watched him ride--never man more to her
mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the ha-
ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of
a neighbor whom the family did not visit.
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