Only, if a man has
not love enough to make a hero of him, what is he to do?
He was away a month, and came back in seeming health and spirits.
But it was no small relief to him to find on his arrival that
Letty was no longer at Thornwick.
She had gone through a sore time. To have made Godfrey unhappy,
made her miserable; but how was she to help it? She belonged to
Tom! Not once did she entertain the thought of ceasing to be
Tom's. She did not even say to herself, what would Tom do if she
forgot and forsook him--and for what he could not help! for
having left her because death took him away! But what was she to
do? She must not remain where she was. No more must she tell his
mother why she went.
She wrote to Mary, and told her she could not stay much longer.
They were very kind, she said, but she must be gone before
Godfrey came back.
Mary suspected the truth. The fact that Letty did not give her
any reason was almost enough. The supposition also rendered
intelligible the strange mixture of misery and hardness in
Godfrey's behavior at the time of Letty's old mishap. She
answered, begging her to keep her mind easy about the future, and
her friend informed of whatever concerned her.
This much from Mary was enough to set Letty at comparative ease.
She began to recover strength, and was able to write a letter to
Godfrey, to leave where he would find it, in his study.
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