Toward him, therefore, she kept silence for the present.

If she had spoken then, things might have gone very differently: it might have brought Godfrey to the point of righteous resolve or of passionate utterance.

He could not well have opposed his mother's design without going further and declaring that, if Letty would, she should remain where she was, the mistress of the house.

If not the feeling of what was due to her, the dread of the house without her might well have brought him to this.
Letty, for her part, believed her cousin Godfrey regarded her with pity, and showed her kindness from a generous sense of duty; she was a poor, dull creature for whom her cousin must do what he could: one word of genuine love from him, one word even of such love as was in him, would have caused her nature to shoot heavenward and spread out earthward with a rapidity that would have astonished him; she would thereby have come into her spiritual property at once, and heaven would have opened to her--a little way at least--probably to close again for a time.

Now she felt crushed.