nd sat down beside her on the hard old slippery
horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her.
Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone
tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a
spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she caught his
troubled gaze.

"I am not ill, Cousin Godfrey," she said. "Do not look at me so, or I
shall cry again. You know you never liked to see me cry."

"My poor girl!" said Godfrey, in a voice which, if he had not kept it
lower than natural, would have broken, "you are suffering."

"Oh, no, I'm not," replied Letty, with a pitiful effort at the
cheerful; "I am only so glad to see you again, Cousin Godfrey."

She sat on the edge of the sofa, and had put her open hands, palm to
palm, between her knees, in a childish way, looking like one chidden,
who did not deserve it, but was ready to endure. For a moment Godfrey
sat gazing at her, with troubled heart and troubled looks, then between
his teeth muttered, "Damn the rascal!"

Letty sat straight up, and turned upon him eyes of appeal, scared, yet
ready to defend. Her hands were now clinched, one on each side of her;
she was poking the little fists into the squab of the sofa.

"Cousin Godfrey!" she cried, "if you mean Tom, you must not, you must
not. I will go away if you speak a word against him. I will; I will.--I
_must,_ you know!"

Godfrey made no reply--neither apologized nor sought to cover.

"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 Godfr