e what in novels is commonly called love, than, if I said ambition
or avarice had grown to a passion, I should mean those vices had
changed to love. Godfrey Wardour was at least ten years older than
Letty; besides him, she had not a single male relative in this
world--neither had she mother or sister on whom to let out her heart;
while of Mrs. Wardour, who was more severe on her than on any one else,
she was not a little afraid: from these causes it came that Cousin
Godfrey grew and grew in Letty's imagination, until he was to her
everything great and good--her idea of him naturally growing as she
grew herself under his influences. To her he was the heart of wisdom,
the head of knowledge, the arm of strength.

But her worship was quiet, as the worship of maiden, in whatever kind,
ought to be. She knew nothing of what is called love except as a word,
and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest
suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have
resented as the most offensive impertinence--an accusation of
impossible irreverence.

By degrees Godfrey came to understand, but then only in a measure, with
what a self-refusing, impressionable nature he was dealing; and, as he
saw, he became more generous toward her, more gentle and delicate in
his ministration. Of necessity he grew more and more interested in her,
especially after he had made the discovery that the moment she laid
hold of a truth--the moment, that is, when it was no longer another's
idea but her own perception--it began to sprout in her in all
directions of practice. By nature she was not intellectually quick;
but, because such was her character, the ratio of her progress was of
necessity an increasing one.

If Godfrey had seen in his new relation to Letty a possibility of the
revival of feelings he had supposed for ever extinguished, such a
possibility would have borne to him purely the aspect of danger; at the
mere idea of again falling in love he would have sickened with dismay;
and whether or not ho had any dread of such a catastrophe, certain it
is that he behaved to her more as a pedagogue than a cousinly tutor,
insisting on a precision in all she did that might have gone far to
rouse resentment and recoil in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just
as surely, notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow
into his heart: it _could_ not be otherwise. The idea of her was making
a nest for itself