My dear, I have told you all." I held his hand for a little while in mine.
"I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!" "And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the guardian who is a father to her!" At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face.

He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they had given him a shock.

I again inwardly repeated, wondering, "That I could readily understand.

None that I could readily understand!" No, it was true.

I did not understand it.