propriate thing to Godfrey, for
reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he
imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for
desiring it. This was rather a coarse mode of estimating Silas's
relation to Eppie; but we must remember that many of the impressions
which Godfrey was likely to gather concerning the labouring people
around him would favour the idea that deep affections can hardly go
along with callous palms and scant means; and he had not had the
opportunity, even if he had had the power, of entering intimately into
all that was exceptional in the weaver's experience. It was only the
want of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for Godfrey
deliberately to entertain an unfeeling project: his natural kindness
had outlived that blighting time of cruel wishes, and Nancy's praise of
him as a husband was not founded entirely on a wilful illusion.

"I was right," she said to herself, when she had recalled all their
scenes of discussion--"I feel I was right to say him nay, though it
hurt me more than anything; but how good Godfrey has been about it!
Many men would have been very angry with me for standing out against
their wishes; and they might have thrown out that they'd had ill-luck
in marrying me; but Godfrey has never been the man to say me an unkind
word. It's only what he can't hide: everything seems so blank to him,
I know; and the land--what a difference it 'ud make to him, when he
goes to see after things, if he'd children growing up that he was doing
it all for! But I won't murmur; and perhaps if he'd married a woman
who'd have had children, she'd have vexed him in other ways."

This possibility was Nancy's chief comfort; and to give it greater
strength, she laboured to make it impossible that any other wife should
have had more perfect tenderness. She had been _forced_ to vex him by
that one denial. Godfrey was not insensible to her loving effort, and
did Nancy no injustice as to the motives of her obstinacy. It was
impossible to have lived with her fifteen years and not be aware that
an unselfish clinging to the right, and a sincerity clear as the
flower-born dew, were her main characteristics; indeed, Godfrey felt
this so strongly, that his own more wavering nature, too averse to
facing difficulty to be unvaryingly simple and truthful, was kept in a
certain awe of this gentle wife who watched his looks with a yearning
to obey them. It se