I am most anxious to
secure their future welfare. You would have been very wrong had you
declined to accept this on their behalf; but I think that in return
for it you need not have begrudged me the affection and obedience
which generally follows from such good offices."
"Mr Dale, I have begrudged you nothing of this."
"I am hurt;--I am hurt," he continued. And she was surprised by his
look of pain even more than by the unaccustomed warmth of his words.
"What you have said has, I have known, been the case all along. But
though I had felt it to be so, I own that I am hurt by your open
words."
"Because I have said that my own children must ever be my own?"
"Ah, you have said more than that. You and the girls have been living
here, close to me, for--how many years is it now?--and during all
those years there has grown up for me no kindly feeling. Do you think
that I cannot hear, and see, and feel? Do you suppose that I am a
fool and do not know? As for yourself you would never enter this
house if you did not feel yourself constrained to do so for the
sake of appearances.
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