"Why, child!" he said at last, "you are half starved!"
The pity and tenderness of both word and tone were too much for
her. She had not been at all pitying herself, but such an
utterance from the man she loved like an elder brother so wrought
upon her enfeebled condition that she broke into a cry. She
strove to suppress her emotion; she fought with it; in her agony
she would have rushed from the room, had not Godfrey caught her,
drawn her down beside him, and kept her there. "You shall not
leave me!" he said, in that voice Letty had always been used to
obey. "Who has a right to know how things go with you, if I have
not? Come, you must tell me all about it."
"I have nothing to tell, Cousin Godfrey," she replied with some
calmness, for Godfrey's decision had enabled her to conquer
herself, "except that baby is ill, and looks as if he would never
get better, and it is like to break my heart. Oh, he is such a
darling, Cousin Godfrey!"
"Let me see him," said Godfrey, in his heart detesting the child
--the visible sign that another was nearer to Letty than he.
She jumped up, almost ran into the next room, and, coming back
with her little one, laid him in Godfrey's arms. The moment he
felt the weight of the little, sad-looking, sleeping thing, he
grew human toward him, and saw in him Letty and not Tom.
"Good God! the child is starving, too," he exclaimed.
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