There was not the smallest harm in these walks and visits. Lumley brought errands and notes from Frances, and carried to her messages and books, for just at this time their father was very ill, and Frances was in close attendance, and never left the Rectory. Letty enjoyed one luxury, and that was a liberal supply of books; no need for _her_ to spend her allowance on frocks, and the quarterly payments went in relieving charities, subscribing to periodicals, and buying literature. Sometimes, she told herself that without these friends, that carried her out of her gloomy, isolated life, she would have gone melancholy mad. True, there was the child; but a baby aged two and a half, cannot altogether fill the life of an educated girl of twenty, and, besides this, the baby had a nurse who stood on her dignity, and required her nursery to herself. Oh, the long, long hours that Letty spent alone, the only breaks being a hurried visit to the Rectory. How the pensive melancholy of the autumn woods oppressed her! the low, grey fog, lying in the hollows of the park, took the shape of shadowy spectres rising from their graves; bare brown trees, rooted in carpets of ruddy leaves, seemed to mock her with their crooked branches, and the staring sun, sinking into the west, to cast on her rays of pity and derision. Yes, she had sold herself to escape immediate discomfort, and this was her punishment: an existence of loveless degradation. In winter, her solitude and misery pressed on her still more cruelly; she could relieve the villagers with blankets and coal, but what could she do for the thousands of perishing birds, the starving hares, the shivering cattle? The nights were the worst, when the wind came sobbing to the windows, shook the doors of the empty rooms, and moaned among the trees, with the despairing cries of a lost soul; rats in the old walls--and strange unaccountable noises--made sleep--broken--and waking a terror. But here at last was summer! and she could spend most of her time out of doors. At the moment, she realised that it was an exhilarating change, to have a companion near her own age to stroll with through the woods, and talk to. Oh, if she had only been married to Lancelot Lumley! Into the emptiness of her heart, there stole the inevitable temptations of memory; but it was sinful to harbour such thoughts. Well, at any rate, Lancelot had never actually asked her to marry him--Hugo had--and so there it was. And here she was--the most miserable young woman within the four seas.