'
'But we can take Eppie now,' said Godfrey. 'I won't mind the
world knowing at last. I'll be plain and open for the rest o' my
life.'
'It'll be different coming to us, now she's grown up,' said
Nancy, shaking her head sadly. 'But it's your duty to acknowledge
her and provide for her; and I'll do my part by her, and pray to God
Almighty to make her love me.'
'Then we'll go together to Silas Marner's this very night, as
soon as everything's quiet at the Stone-pits.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
BETWEEN eight and nine o'clock that evening, Eppie and Silas were
seated alone in the cottage. After the great excitement the weaver had
undergone from the events of the afternoon, he had felt a longing
for this quietude, and had even begged Mrs Winthrop and Aaron, who had
naturally lingered behind everyone else, to leave him alone with his
child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that
stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external
stimulus intolerable- when there is no sense of weariness, but
rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an
impossibility. Anyone who has watched such moments in other men
remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange definiteness that
comes over coarse features from that transient influence. It is as
if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had sent
wonder-working vibrations through the heavy mortal frame- as if
'beauty born of murmuring sound' had passed into the face of the
listener.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248