The analyses of a text #1

The narrator recalls his adolescence.
He took a long journey, after his young wife died of a disease.
He now thinks of his old friend Agnes; he thinks he and Agnes would fall for one another.

Chapter 58 ABSENCE

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If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.
I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me with another love - and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so - I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her.
[David Copperfield by Charles Dickens]
1. I'd like to know if "remotely" means "somewhat."
2. I'd like to know if "hitherto unknown" modifies "affection."
3. I'd like to know if "another love" means "erotic love."
4. And I'd like to know if "when we were both mere children" modifies "as one."
Thank you in advance for your help.