her." So Captain Clayton rushed out, anxious for another
cause for triumph.

Mr. Jones had heard of his suit, and had heard also that the suit was
made to Edith and not to Ada. "There is not one in a dozen who would
have taken Edith," said he to himself,--"unless it be one who saw her
with my eyes." But yet he did not approve of the marriage. "They were
poverty stricken," he said, and Clayton went about from day to day
with his life in his hand. "A brave man," he said to himself; "but
singularly foolhardy,--unless it be that he wants to die." He had not
been called upon for his consent, for Edith had never yielded. She,
too, had said that it was impossible. "If Ada would have suited, it
might have been possible, but not between Yorke and me." They had
both come now to call him by his Christian name; and they to him were
Ada and Edith; but with their father he had never quite reached the
familiarity of a Christian name.

Mr. Jones had, in truth, been so saddened by the circumstances of the
last two years that he could not endure the idea of marriages in his
family. "Of course, if you choose, my dear, you can do as you like,"
he used to say to Edith.

"But I don't choose."

"What there are left of us should, I think, remain together. I
suppose they cannot turn me out of this house. The Prime Minister
will hardly bring in a Bill that the estates bought this last hundred
years shall belong to the owners of the next century. He can do so,
of course, as things go now. There are no longer any lords to stop
him, and the House of Commons, who want their seats, will do anything
he bids them. It's the First Lieutenant who looks after Ireland, who
has ideas of justice with which the angels of light have certainly
not filled his mind. That we should get nothing from our purchased
property this century, and give it up in the course of the next, is
in strict accordance with his thinking. We can depend upon nothing.
My brother-in-law can, of course, sell me out any day, and would not
stop for a moment. Everybody has to get his own, except an Irish
landlord. But I think we should fare ill all together. Your brother
is behaving nobly, and I don't think we ought to desert him. Of
course you can do as you please."

Then the squire pottered on, wretched in heart; or, rather, down in
the mouth, as we say, and gave his advice to his younger daughter,
not, in truth, knowing how her heart stood. But a man, when he
undertakes to advise a