Lammeter, Nancy

The gentle, modest, but firm young beauty of Raveloe; later Godfrey Cass's wife. "Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattiness . . . and as for her own person, it gave the same idea of perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a little bird . . . when at last she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her lace tucker, her coral necklace, and coral eardrops, the Miss Gunns could see nothing to criticise except her hands, which bore the traces of butter-making, cheese-crushing, and even still coarser work . . . There is hardly a servant-maid in these days who is not better informed than Miss Nancy; yet she had the essential attributes of a lady—high veracity, delicate honour in her dealings, deference to others, and refined personal habits . . . she was slightly proud and exacting, and as constant in her affection towards a baseless opinion as towards an erring lover." She marries Godfrey Cass, to whom she is much attached, and rules him firmly but kindly, believing strictly in her own convictions. In spite of the fact that she grieves deeply over the death of her own baby, she will not consent to take another in its place, and steadily refuses Godfrey's suggestion that they adopt Eppie. When Eppie is nearly grown up, Godfrey confesses that she is his own child, and then Nancy agrees to take her, and is much disappointed, for her husband's sake, when Eppie chooses to stay with old Silas Marner, her adoptive father.

<em>Silas Marner</em>

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