The "fatherly" feeling was swallowed up in another, which effectually sealed the good man's tongue.

He determined to make her his wife, and then the letters, the whole story, in which he had read her heart as clear as a book, and was afraid of nothing, concerned himself alone.

He felt at liberty to tell her how or when he chose.

At least so he persuaded himself.
"But perhaps I, too, was a little bit of a coward, my child.

I, too, might have avoided much misery if I had had the strength to speak out.