t Miss Dormer."

"Why is she to be called Miss Dormer?"

"Because she has shown herself worthy of my respect."

"What is it that you mean, Jonathan?"

"She knew her own mind when she told me at first that she could not
accept the offer which I did myself the honour of making her, and now
she sticks to her purpose. I think that a young lady who will do that
should be respected."

"She has refused you again?"

"Altogether."

"As how?"

"Well, I hardly know that I am prepared to explain the 'as how' even
to you. I am about as thick-skinned a man in such matters as you may
find anywhere, but I do not know that even I can bring myself to tell
the 'as how.' The 'as how' was very clear in one respect. It was
manifest that she knew her own mind, which is a knowledge not in the
possession of all young ladies. She told me that she could not marry
me."

"I do not believe it."

"Not that she told me so?"

"Not that she knew her own mind. She is a little simple fool, who
with some vagary in her brain is throwing away utterly her own
happiness, while she is vexing you."

"As to the vexation you are right."

"Cross-grained little idiot!"

"An idiot she certainly is not; and as to being cross-grained I have
never found it. A human being with the grains running more directly
all in the same way I have never come across."

"Do not talk to me, Jonathan, like that," she said. "When I call
her cross-grained I mean that she is running counter to her own
happiness."

"I cannot tell anything about that. I should have endeavoured,
I think, to make her happy. She has certainly run counter to my
happiness."

"And now?"

"What;--as to this very moment! I shall leave Stalham to-morrow."

"Why should you do that? Let her go if one must go."

"That is just what I want to prevent. Why should she lose her little
pleasure?"

"You don't suppose that we can make the house happy to her now! Why
should we care to do so when she will have driven you away?" He sat
silent for a minute or two looking at the fire, with his hands on his
two knees. "You must acknowledge, Jonathan," continued she, "that I
have taken kindly to this Ayala of yours."

"I do acknowledge it."

"But it cannot be that she should be the same to us simply as a young
lady, staying here as it were on her own behalf, as she was when we
regarded her as your possible wife. Then every little trick and grace
belonging to her endeared itself to us because we regard