Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/245

 they were in the same house!—or to give her presents. But I was informed that this was not a woman’s province. So we dragged on, waiting for the blow. ..

I quite dreaded the Morecambe post-mark. The girl wrote every other day, and every letter seemed to plunge poor Will into deeper gloom. The code would not let him make a confidant of his mother, but one day I saw one of these letters. It bore no name and opened with a flood of mingled passion and reproach; only when I saw “Your heart-broken Molly” at the end did I realize that the letter was intended for Will. She was begging him to come back and talking a great deal about his “promise”. . . I should have paid no attention if there had not been other things as well: talk about her “honour” and so on and so forth. . . Her “soul”. . . God would never forgive her—the egotism of the girl! . . . Then I felt that, to get a hold on Will, she had stopped at nothing. . . I wonder what you would have done in my place? . . Constant dripping wears away a stone, and this dazing attack would in time have broken down my boy’s resistance. Suppose he had let himself be blackmailed into marrying her! No money on either side—and Will’s parents could do nothing to help—, not a taste in common,