quired of her. What she
understood, she encountered willingly and bravely; but, the simplest
thing that seemed to involve any element of obscurity, she dreaded like
a dragon in his den.

"You don't seem to relish the proposal, Letty," said Mrs. Wardour. "I
hope you had not taken it in your head that I meant to leave you
independent. What I have done for you, I have done purely for your
father's sake. I was under no obligation to take the least trouble
about you. But I have more regard to your welfare than I fear you give
me credit for."

"O aunt! it's only that I'm not fit for being a governess. I shouldn't
a bit mind being dairymaid or housemaid. I would go to such a place
to-morrow, if you liked."

"Letty, your tastes may be vulgar, but you owe it to your family to
look at least like a lady."

"But I am not scholar enough for a governess, aunt."

"That is not my fault. I sent you to a good school. Now, I will find
you a good situation, and you must contrive to keep it."

"O aunt! let me stay here--just as I am. Call me your dairymaid or your
housemaid. It is all one--I do the work now."

"Do you mean to reflect on me that I have required menial offices of
you? I have been to you in the place of a mother; and it is for me, not
for you, to make choice of your path in life."

"Do you want me to go at once?" asked Letty, her heart sinking again,
and her voice trembling with a pathos her aunt quite misunderstood.

"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 wa