er cared for me, Letty!"

He dropped her hands, and turned half aside, like a figure warped with
fire.

"I care for you more than anybody in the world--except, perhaps, Mary,"
said Letty: truthfulness was a part of her.

"And I care for you more than all the world!--more than very being--it
is worthless without you. O Letty! your eyes haunt me night and day! I
love you with my whole soul."

"How kind of you, Cousin Godfrey!" faltered Letty, trembling, and not
knowing what she said. She was very frightened, but hardly knew why,
for the idea of Godfrey in love with her was all but inconceivable.
Nevertheless, its approach was terrible. Like a fascinated bird she
could not take her eyes off his face. Her knees began to fail her; it
was all she could do to stand. But Godfrey was full of himself, and had
not the most shadowy suspicion of how she felt. He took her emotion for
a favorable sign, and stupidly went on:

"Letty, I can't help it! I know I oughtn't to speak to you like
this--so soon, but I can't keep quiet any longer. I love you more than
the universe and its Maker. A thousand times rather would I cease to
live, than live without you to love me. I have loved you for years and
years--longer than I know. I was loving you with heart and soul and
brain and eyes when you went away and left me."

"Cousin Godfrey!" shrieked Letty, "don't you know I belong to Tom?"

And she dropped like one lifeless on the grass at his feet.

Godfrey felt as if suddenly damned; and his hell was death. He stood
gazing on the white face. The world, heaven, God, and nature were dead,
and that was the soul of it all, dead before him! But such death is
never born of love. This agony was but the fog of disappointed
self-love; and out of it suddenly rose what seemed a new power to live,
but one from a lower world: it was all a wretched dream, out of which
he was no more to issue, in which he must go on for ever, dreaming, yet
acting as one wide awake! Mechanically he stooped and lifted the
death-defying lover in his arms, and carried her to the house. He felt
no thrill as he held the treasure to his heart. It was the merest
material contact. He bore her to the room where his mother sat, laid
her on the sofa, said he had found her under the oak-tree--and went to
his study, away in the roof. On a chair in the middle of the floor he
sat, like a man bereft of all. Nothing came between him and suicide but
an infinite scorn. A slow rage devoure