"As soon as I have secured for you a desirable situation--not
before," answered Mrs. Wardour, in a tone generously protective.
Her affection for the girl had never been deep; and, the moment
she fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she
became to her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but
was she bound to harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are
who never learn to see anything except in its relation to
themselves, nor that relation except as fancied by themselves;
and, this being a withering habit of mind, they keep growing
drier, and older, and smaller, and deader, the longer they live--
thinking less of other people, and more of themselves and their
past experience, all the time as they go on withering.
But Mrs. Wardour was in some dread of what her son would say when
he came to know what she had been doing; for, when we are not at
ease with ourselves, when conscience keeps moving as if about to
speak, then we dread the disapproval of the lowliest, and Godfrey
was the only one before whom his mother felt any kind of awe.
Toward him, therefore, she kept silence for the present. If she
had spoken then, things might have gone very differently: it
might have brought Godfrey to the point of righteous resolve or
of passionate utterance. He could not well have opposed his
mother's design without going further and declaring that, if
Letty would, she should remain where she was, the mistress of the
house.
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