For its sake this wise man was firmly
resolved on caution; and so, when at last they met, it was no
more with that _abandon_ of simple pleasure with which he
had been wont to receive her when she came knocking at the door
of his study, bearing clear question or formless perplexity; and
his restraint would of itself have been enough to make Letty,
whose heart was now beating in a very thicket of nerves, at once
feel it impossible to carry out her intent--impossible to confess
to him any more than to his mother; while Godfrey, on his part,
perceiving her manifest shyness and unwonted embarrassment,
attributed them altogether to his own wisely guarded behavior,
and, seeing therein no sign of loss of influence, continued his
caution. Thus the pride, which is of man, mingled with the love,
which is of God, and polluted it. From that hour he began to lord
it over the girl; and this change in his behavior immediately
reacted on himself, in the obscure perception that there might be
danger to her in continued freedom of intercourse: he must,
therefore, he concluded, order the way for both; he must take
care of her as well as of himself. But was it consistent with
this resolve that he should, for a whole month, spend every
leisure moment in working at a present for her--a written marvel
of neatness and legibility?
Again, by this meeting askance, as it were, another
disintegrating force was called into operation: the moment Letty
knew she could not tell Godfrey, and that therefore a wall had
arisen between him and her, that moment woke in her the desire,
as she had never felt it before, to see Tom Helmer.
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