...of turmoil

A plain man like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some embarrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are coarser than his intentions, and that are likely to fall gratingly on susceptible feelings. While he had been speaking, Eppie had quietly passed her arm behind Silas's head, and let her hand rest against in caressingly: she felt him trembling violently. He was silent for some moments when Mr Cass had ended - powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike painful. Eppie's heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to him, when one struggling dread at last gained mastery over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly -

"Eppie, my child, speak. I won't stand in your way. Thank Mr and Mrs Cass."

[Silas Marner, Eliot, G.]