"To hate our having, with our tremendous intentions, not brought it off. And I daresay I should have hated it for you even more than for myself."
"That's not unlikely perhaps when it was for me, after all, that you did it."
He had hesitated, but only a moment. "I never told you so."
"Well, Charlotte herself soon enough told me."
"But I never told HER," her father had answered.
"Are you very sure?" she had presently asked.
"Well, I like to think how thoroughly I was taken with her, and how right I was, and how fortunate, to have that for my basis. I told her all the good I thought of her."
"Then that," Maggie had returned, "was precisely part of the good. I mean it was precisely part of it that she could so beautifully understand."
"Yes—understand everything."
"Everything—and in particular your reasons. Her telling me—that showed me how she had understood."