'It troubles me.

My son is a stranger; all these years have made him quite a different man from what I remember; and the worst is, I can no longer trust myself to judge him.

Yet I must know the truth--Sidney, I must know the truth.
It's hard to speak ill of the only son left to me out of the four I once had, but if I think of him as he was seventeen years ago--no, no, he must have changed as he has grown older.

But you must help me to know him, Sidney.' And in a very few days Sidney had his first opportunity of observing Jane's father.

At this meeting Joseph seemed to desire nothing so much as to recommend himself by an amiable bearing.