Letty sat straight up, and turned upon him eyes of appeal, scared, yet ready to defend. Her hands were now clinched, one on each side of her; she was poking the little fists into the squab of the sofa.
"Cousin Godfrey!" she cried, "if you mean Tom, you must not, you must not. I will go away if you speak a word against him. I will; I will.—I must, you know!"
Godfrey made no reply—neither apologized nor sought to cover.
"Why, child!" he said at last, "you are half starved!"
The pity and tenderness of both word and tone were too much for her. She had not been at all pitying herself, but such an utterance from the man she loved like an elder brother so wrought upon her enfeebled condition that she broke into a cry. She strove to suppress her emotion; she fought with it; in her agony she would have rushed from the room, had not Godfrey caught her, drawn her down beside him, and kept her there. "You shall not leave me!" he said, in that voice Letty had always been used to obey. "Who has a right to know how things go with you, if I have not? Come, you must tell me all about it."
"I have nothing to tell, Cousin Godfrey," she replied with some calmness, for Godfrey's decision had enabled her to conquer herself, "except that baby is ill, and looks as if he would never get better, and it is like to break my heart. Oh, he is such a darling, Cousin Godfrey!"
"Let me see him," said Godfrey, in his heart detesting the child—the visible sign that another was nearer to Letty than he.
She jumped up, almost ran into the next room, and, coming back with her little one, laid him in Godfrey's arms. The moment he felt the weight of the little, sad-looking, sleeping thing, he grew human toward him, and saw in him Letty and not Tom.
"Good God! the child is starving, too," he exclaimed.
"Oh, no, Cousin Godfrey!" cried Letty; "he is not starving. He had a fresh-laid egg for breakfast this morning, and some arrowroot for dinner, and some bread and milk for tea—"