If Godfrey had seen in his new relation to Letty a possibility of
the revival of feelings he had supposed for ever extinguished,
such a possibility would have borne to him purely the aspect of
danger; at the mere idea of again falling in love he would have
sickened with dismay; and whether or not ho had any dread of such
a catastrophe, certain it is that he behaved to her more as a
pedagogue than a cousinly tutor, insisting on a precision in all
she did that might have gone far to rouse resentment and recoil
in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just as surely,
notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow into
his heart: it _could_ not be otherwise. The idea of her was
making a nest for itself in his soul--what kind of a nest for
long he did not know, and for long did not think to inquire.
Living thus, like an elder brother with a much younger sister, he
was more than satisfied, refusing, it may be, to regard the
probability of intruding change. But how far any man and woman
may have been made capable of loving without falling in love, can
be answered only after question has yielded to history. In the
mean time, Mrs. Wardour, who would have been indignant at the
notion of any equal bond between her idolized son and her
patronized cousin, neither saw, nor heard, nor suspected anything
to rouse uneasiness.
Things were thus in the old house, when the growing affection of
Letty for Mary Marston took form one day in the request that she
would make Thornwick the goal of her Sunday walk.
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