severely--"I should have
thought your affection for Eppie would make you rejoice in what was for
her good, even if it did call upon you to give up something. You ought
to remember your own life's uncertain, and she's at an age now when her
lot may soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in
her father's home: she may marry some low working-man, and then,
whatever I might do for her, I couldn't make her well-off. You're
putting yourself in the way of her welfare; and though I'm sorry to
hurt you after what you've done, and what I've left undone, I feel now
it's my duty to insist on taking care of my own daughter. I want to do
my duty."

It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie that was
more deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey's. Thought had been
very busy in Eppie as she listened to the contest between her old
long-loved father and this new unfamiliar father who had suddenly come
to fill the place of that black featureless shadow which had held the
ring and placed it on her mother's finger. Her imagination had darted
backward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this
revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in Godfrey's last
speech which helped to make the previsions especially definite. Not
that these thoughts, either of past or future, determined her
resolution--_that_ was determined by the feelings which vibrated to
every word Silas had uttered; but they raised, even apart from these
feelings, a repulsion towards the offered lot and the newly-revealed
father.

Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, and alarmed
lest Godfrey's accusation should be true--lest he should be raising his
own will as an obstacle to Eppie's good. For many moments he was mute,
struggling for the self-conquest necessary to the uttering of the
difficult words. They came out tremulously.

"I'll say no more. Let it be as you will. Speak to the child. I'll
hinder nothing."

Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affections,
shared her husband's view, that Marner was not justifiable in his wish
to retain Eppie, after her real father had avowed himself. She felt
that it was a very hard trial for the poor weaver, but her code allowed
no question that a father by blood must have a claim above that of any
foster-father. Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous
circumstances and the privileges of "respectability", could not ente