It was a lovely letter--the utterance of a simple, childlike
spirit--with much in it, too, I confess, that was but prettily
childish. She poured out on Godfrey the affection of a
womanchild. She told him what a reverence and love he had been to
her always; told him, too, that it would change her love into
fear, perhaps something worse, if he tried to make her forget
Tom. She told him he was much too grand for her to dare love him
in that way, but she could look up to him like an angel--only he
must not come between her and Tom. Nothing could be plainer,
simpler, honester, or stronger, than the way the little woman
wrote her mind to the great man. Had he been worthy of her, he
might even yet, with her help, have got above his passion in a
grand way, and been a great man indeed. But, as so many do, he
only sat upon himself, kept himself down, and sank far below his
passion.
When he went to his study the day after his return, he saw the
letter. His heart leaped like a wild thing in a trap at sight of
the ill-shaped, childish writing; but--will my lady reader
believe it?--the first thought that shot through it was--"She
shall find it too late! I am not one to be left and taken at
will!" When he read it, however, it was with a curling lip of
scorn at the childishness of the creature to whom he had offered
the heart of Godfrey Wardour. Instead of admiring the lovely
devotion of the girl-widow to her boy-husband, he scorned himself
for having dreamed of a creature who could not only love a fool
like Tom Helmer, but go on loving him after he was dead, and that
even when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he
loved her.
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