A man less vulnerable--I hate the word, but it is the right one with Sepia concerned, for she was, in truth, an enemy--might perhaps have yielded room to the suspicion that these meetings were not all so accidental as they appeared, and as Sepia treated them; but no glimmer of such a thought passed through the mind of Godfrey.

He knew nothing of all that my readers know to Sepia's disadvantage, and her eyes were enough to subdue most men from the first--for a time at least.

Had it not been for the return of Letty, she would by this time have had him her slave: nothing but slavery could it ever be to love a woman like her, who gave no love in return, only exercised power.

But although he was always glad to meet her, and his heart had begun to beat a little faster at sight of her approach, the glamour of her presence was nearly destroyed by the arrival of Letty; and Sepia was more than sharp enough to perceive a difference in the expression of his eyes the next time she met him.

At the very first glance she suspected some hostile influence at work--intentionally hostile, for persons with a consciousness like Sepia's are always imagining enemies.
And as the two worst enemies she could have were the truth and a woman, she was alternately jealous and terrified: the truth and a woman together, she had not yet begun to fear; that would, indeed, be too much! She soon found there was a young woman at Thornwick, who had but just arrived; and ere long she learned who she was--one, indeed, who had already a shadowy existence in her life--was it possible the shadow should be now taking solidity, and threatening to foil her?
Not once did it occur to her that, were it so, there would be retribution in it.
She had heard of Tom's death through "The Firefly," which had a kind, extravagant article about him, but she had not once thought of his widow--and there she was, a hedge across the path she wanted to go! If the house of Durnmelling had but been one story higher, that she might see all round Thornwick! For some time now, as I have already more than hinted, Sepia had been fashioning a man to her thrall--Mewks, namely, the body-servant of Mr.
Redmain.