And yet he did his duty as few stepfathers do it.

Charlotte admitted that he was very kind to her, that he was an excellent husband, and altogether the most conscientious and respectable of mankind; but she admitted with equal candour that she had never been able to like him.

"I daresay it is very wicked of me not to be fond of him, when he is so good and generous to me," she said to her chosen friend and companion; "but I never can feel quite at home with him.

I try to think of him as a father sometimes, but I never can get over the 'step.' Do you know I have dreamed of him sometimes?
and though he is so kind to me in reality, I always fancy him cruel to me in my dreams.
I suppose it is on account of his black eyes and black whiskers," added Miss Halliday, in a meditative tone.

"It is certainly a misfortune for a person to have blacker eyes and whiskers than the rest of the world; for there seems something stern and hard, and almost murderous, in such excessive blackness." Charlotte Halliday was a very different creature from the mother whom Mr.Sheldon had absorbed into himself.