Priscilla and her father have gone home from church with Nancy and Godfrey. Nancy is trying to persuade them to stay for tea, but Priscilla thinks they must be getting home to look after the management of the farm. Her father now leaves everything to her management. Priscilla recommends that Nancy start a dairy to keep herself busy. Nancy says that that would not make up to Godfrey; but when Priscilla says that men want too much, Nancy defends her husband's disappointment at not having children.
After Priscilla leaves, Godfrey goes out to look at the draining of the Stone Pits, and Nancy sits alone and thinks over the years of their marriage. She asks herself whether she is to blame for Godfrey's disappointment. Their one child died in infancy, and when Godfrey had suggested that they adopt a child, she refused, saying that if they were meant to have a child one would have been granted them. Godfrey had wanted to adopt Eppie and had pointed out that she seemed to have turned out well enough for Marner, but Nancy had pointed out that Marner didn't seek out the child. She was given to him. Nancy has always tried to make up to Godfrey in other ways his failure to have a family.
Godfrey has always specified that it should be Eppie whom they might adopt, but he has never been able to tell his wife why. He fears that she would feel only repulsion for him if she learned the truth. His childlessness has come to seem a retribution to him. It has never occurred to him that Marner might refuse to give up Eppie in any case, for his impressions of the feelings of laboring people are not very distinct.
Nancy's maid comes in with tea and reports that there is something strange going on outside. People are hurrying all one way on the road. Nancy begins to feel an uncertain fear. She goes to the window to look for Godfrey, just as he enters at the other end of the room. He appears pale and shaken. He has her sit down before he tells her that Dunstan's skeleton has been found in the pits.
Nancy is somewhat surprised that Godfrey is so shaken by the death of a brother he cared little about. She thinks she understands his shame when he says that Dunstan was the one who had robbed Silas. The money was found with him. Godfrey is not through, however. He says that the truth must come out sometime, and he tells her that Eppie is his own child. Nancy shows only regret when she replies that if he had told her that before, they could have done part of their duty to the child. Godfrey asks her forgiveness, but she says the wrong is not to her but to the child. Godfrey says that they may take the child now, then. They plan to go that evening to Marner's cottage.
