Let him be absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not forget that closing scene.

He could not forget that he had had no part in it.

That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth' lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator--not a sharer with them--quite shut out.
Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind.

Young as she was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in his too) even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him.

As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself.