, if we did not know that human beliefs, like all other
natural growths, elude the barriers of system.
    Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about twelve years old, as
a child suitable for them to adopt. It had never occurred to him that Silas
would rather part with his life than with Eppie. Surely the weaver would wish
the best to the child he had taken so much trouble with, and would be glad that
such good fortune should happen to her: she would always be very grateful to
him, and he would be well provided for to the end of his life - provided for as
the excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not an appropriate
thing for people in a higher station to take a charge off the hands of a man in
a lower? It seemed an eminently appropriate 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