in his soul--what kind of a nest for long he did not
know, and for long did not think to inquire. Living thus, like an elder
brother with a much younger sister, he was more than satisfied,
refusing, it may be, to regard the probability of intruding change. But
how far any man and woman may have been made capable of loving without
falling in love, can be answered only after question has yielded to
history. In the mean time, Mrs. Wardour, who would have been indignant
at the notion of any equal bond between her idolized son and her
patronized cousin, neither saw, nor heard, nor suspected anything to
rouse uneasiness.

Things were thus in the old house, when the growing affection of Letty
for Mary Marston took form one day in the request that she would make
Thornwick the goal of her Sunday walk. She repented, it is true, the
moment she had said the words, from dread of her aunt; but they had
been said, and were accepted. Mary went, and the aunt difficulty had
been got over. The friendship of Godfrey also had now run into that of
the girls, and Mary's visits were continued with pleasure to all, and
certainly with no little profit to herself; for, where the higher
nature can not communicate the greater benefit, it will reap it. Her
Sunday visit became to Mary the one foraging expedition of the
week--that which going to church ought to be, and so seldom can be.

The beginning and main-stay of her spiritual life was, as we have seen,
her father, in whom she believed absolutely. From books and sermons she
had got little good; for in neither kind had the best come nigh her.
She did very nearly her best to obey, but without much perceiving the
splendor of the thing required, or much feeling its might upon her own
eternal nature. She was as yet, in relation to the gospel, much as the
Jews were in relation to their law; they had not yet learned the gospel
of their law, and she was yet only serving the law of the gospel. But
she was making progress, in simple and pure virtue of her obedience.
Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest,
sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall
look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of
its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been
living a life more obedient than the rest.

And now was sent Godfrey to her aid, a teacher himself far behind his
pupil, inasmuch as he was more occupied with what he wa