"Praise is sweet, especially behind one's back.

So pray go on, unless you have something better to say to each other;" and Hope retired briskly into his office.

But when the lovers took him at his word, and began to strut up and down hand in hand, and murmur love's music into each other's ears, he could not take his eyes off them, and his thoughts were sad.

She had only known that young fellow a few months, yet she loved him passionately, and he would take her away from her father before she even knew all that father had done and suffered for her.

When the revelation did come she would perhaps be a wife and a mother, and then even that revelation would fall comparatively flat.
Besides his exceptional grief, he felt the natural pang of a father at the prospect of resigning her to a husband.