As he speaks, my heart goes out to him, but I can find no words in which to dress my thought.
"Nancy!" in a tone of thorough distress.

"I can bear any thing but seeing you shrink and shiver away from me, as I have seen you do from your father." "You _never_ will see that," reply I, laconically, gathering bravery enough to look him in the face, as I deliver this encouraging remark.
"Do you think," he says, beginning to walk restlessly about the room--( long ago he dropped my limp hand)--"that all this week I have had much hope?
Every time that I have caught a glimpse of myself in the glass, I have said, 'Is this a face likely to take a child's fancy?
Do you bear much resemblance to the hero of her storybooks ?' My dear"-- (stopping before me)--"you cannot think my presumption more absurd than I do myself." "I do not think it at all absurd," reply I, beginning to speak quite stoutly, and to be rather diffuse than otherwise.

"Perhaps I did, just at first, when they were all laughing, and saying about your having been at school with father; but _now_ I do not in the least--I do not care what the boys say--I do not, really.

I am not joking." At my words he half stretches out his hand to take mine; but, as if repressing some strong impulse, withdraws it again, and speaks quietly, with a rather sober smile.
"I am afraid that one's soul ages more slowly than one's body, Nancy! Even at my age it has seemed difficult to me to be brought into hourly companionship with all that was most fresh and womanly, and spirited, and pretty." "_Pretty!_" think I."I wish the boys could hear him! they will never believe me if I tell them." "And not wish to have it for my own, to take and make much of.

I that have never had any thing very lovely or lovable in my life.