But it was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child!--after such expectations, too, from her Tom! What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many girls should be married before they are women! The woman comes at length, and finds she is forestalled--that the prostrate and mutilated Dagon of a girl's divinity is all that is left her to do the best with she can! But, thank God, in the faithfully accepted and encountered responsibility, the woman must at length become aware that she has under her feet an ascending stair by which to climb to the woman of the divine ideal.
There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind of Letty.

She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey.

That had speedily followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary.

Her whole life now--as much of it, that is, as was awake--was Tom, and only Tom.
Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his presence.

Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring before her at nothing.