But not a word would he have spoken then, had not Letty in her innocence gone on to torture him.

She sprang from the ground.
"Are you ill, Cousin Godfrey ?" she cried in alarm, and with that sweet tremor of the voice that shows the heart is near.

"You are quite white!--Oh, dear! I've said something I oughtn't to have said! What can it be?
Do forgive me, Cousin Godfrey." In her childlike anxiety she would have thrown her arms round his neck, but her hands only reached his shoulders.

He drew back: such was the nature of the man that every sting tasted of offense.

But he mastered himself, and in his turn, alarmed at the idea of having possibly hurt her, caught her hands in his.