His first emotion was one of cruel jealousy of his daughter's love for another man.
Abigail looked at him with quick pity, but scarcely with full understanding.

She could never lose, as completely as he, their daughter, through a lover.

She had not to yield her to another of the same sex, and in that always the truest sting of jealousy lies.
"So far as that goes, it is no more than we had to expect, Eben," she said.

"You know that.

I turned away from my parents for you." "I know it, Abigail, but--I thought, maybe, it wouldn't come yet a while.