They seem to be expecting me to speak, but, as I still remain silent, he turns at length away, and also gently removes his hands from my shoulders.

We stand apart.
"Well, Nancy," he says, sighing again, as if from the bottom of his soul, "my poor child, it is no use talking about it.

I can never be your father now." "And a very good thing too!" rejoin I, with a dogged stoutness.

"I do not see what I want with _two_ fathers; I have always found _one_ amply enough--quite as much as I could manage, in fact." He seems hardly to be listening to me.

He has dropped his eyes on the ground, and is speaking more to himself than to me.
"Husband and wife we are!" he says, with a slow depression of tone, "and, as long as God's and man's laws stand, husband and wife we must remain!" "You are not very polite," I cry, with an indignant lump rising in my throat; "you speak as if you were _sorry_ for it--_are_ you ?" He lifts his eyes again, and again their keen search investigates the depths of my soul; but no human eye can rightly read the secrets of any other human spirit; they find what they expect to find, not what is there.