The analyses of a text #1

The narrator recalls his adolescence.
After his young, charming wife died of a disease, he took a long journey, during which he would think he and his old friend Agnes would have fallen for one another.
Now he came to his greate aunt's house, and he is going to visit Agnes, who lives with her father, a retired lawyer Mr. Wikfield, operating a school at a neighboring village.

Chapter 60 AGNES

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Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes, without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less regrets. 'Oh, Trot,' I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I understood her better now - 'Blind, blind, blind!'
We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful as it had been once.

'You will find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt, 'though a better man in all other respects - a reclaimed man. Neither will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be measured off in that way.'
'Indeed they must,' said I.
'You will find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.'

[David Copperfield by Charles Dickens]
1. I'd like to know if "they might be" is implied after "but."
2. I'd like to know what role "the" plays here.
3. I'd like to know why it is "neither," not "never."
4. And I'd like to know "that way" refers to "his one poor little inch-rule."
Thank you in advance for your help.