Even if Galofta should reappear, she would know then how to meet him: with a friend or two, such as she had never had yet, she could do what she pleased! It was hard work to get on quite alone--or with people who cared only for themselves! She must have some love on her side! some one who cared for _her_! From all she could learn, there was nothing that amounted even to ordinary friendship between Mr.Wardour and the young widow.

She was in the family but as a distant poor relation--"Much as I am myself!" thought Sepia, with a bitter laugh that even in her own eyes she should be comparable to a poor creature like Letty.

The fact, however, remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward her: she must have been telling him something against her--something she had heard from that detestable little hypocrite who was turned away on suspicion of theft! Yes--that was how Sepia talked _to herself_ about Mary.
One morning, Letty, finding she had an hour's leisure, for her aunt did not pursue her as of old time, wandered out to the oak on the edge of the ha-ha, so memorable with the shadowy presence of her Tom.

She had not been seated under it many minutes before Godfrey caught sight of her from his horse's back: knowing his mother was gone to Testbridge, he yielded to an urgent longing, took his horse to the stable, and crossed the grass to where she sat.
Letty was thinking of Tom--what else was there of her own to do ?--thinking like a child, looking up into the cloud-flecked sky, and thinking Tom was somewhere there, though she could not see him: she must be good and patient, that she might go up to him, as he could not come down to her--if he could, he would have come long ago! All the enchantment of the first days of her love had come back upon the young widow; all the ill that had crept in between had failed from out her memory, as the false notes in music melt in the air that carries the true ones across ravine and river, meadow and grove, to the listening ear.

Letty lived in a dream of her husband--in heaven, "yet not from her"-- such a dream of bliss and hope as in itself went far to make up for all her sorrows.
She was sitting with her back toward the tree and her face to Thornwick, and yet she did not see Godfrey till he was within a few yards of her.