ion.

To the forecasting affection of a mother, the hour when she must yield
the first place both in her son's regards and in the house-affairs
could not but have often presented itself, in doubt and pain--perhaps
dread. Only as year after year passed and Godfrey revealed no tendency
toward marriage, her anxiety changed sides, and she began to fear lest
with Godfrey the ancient family should come to an end. As yet, however,
finding no response to covert suggestion, she had not ventured to speak
openly to him on the subject. All the time, I must add, she had never
thought of Letty either as thwarting or furthering her desires, for in
truth she felt toward her as one on whom Godfrey could never condescend
to look, save with the kindness suitable for one immeasurably below
him. As to what might pass in Letty's mind, Mrs. Wardour had neither
curiosity nor care: else she might possibly have been more considerate
than to fall into the habit of talking to her in such swelling words of
maternal pride that, even if she had not admired him of herself, Letty
could hardly escape coming to regard her cousin Godfrey as the very
first of men.

It added force to the veneration of both mother and cousin--for it was
nothing less than veneration in either--that there was about Godfrey an
air of the inexplicable, or at least the unknown, and therefore
mysterious. This the elder woman, not without many a pang at her
exclusion from his confidence, attributed, and correctly, to some
passage in his life at the university; to the younger it appeared only
as greatness self-veiled from the ordinary world: to such as she, could
be vouchsafed only an occasional peep into the gulf of his knowledge,
the grandeur of his intellect, and the imperturbability of his courage.

The passage in Godfrey's life to which I have referred as vaguely
suspected by his mother, I need not present in more than merest
outline: it belongs to my history only as a component part of the soil
whence it springs, and as in some measure necessary to the
understanding of Godfrey's character. In the last year of his college
life he had formed an attachment, the precise nature of which I do not
know. What I do know is, that the bonds of it were rudely broken, and
of the story nothing remained but disappointment and pain, doubt and
distrust. Godfrey had most likely cherished an overweening notion of
the relative value of the love he gave; but being his, I am certain it
was genui