stence as his last resolution for three years; but
they had been three years of misery to him. He had endured but badly
the idea that the place should pass away out of what he regarded as
the proper male line. To his thinking it was simply an accident that
the power of disposing of the property should be in his hands. It
was a religion to him that a landed estate in Britain should go from
father to eldest son, and in default of a son to the first male heir.
Britain would not be ruined because Llanfeare should be allowed to go
out of the proper order. But Britain would be ruined if Britons did
not do their duty in that sphere of life to which it had pleased God
to call them; and in this case his duty was to maintain the old order
of things.

And during this time an additional trouble added itself to those
existing. Having made up his mind to act in opposition to his own
principles, and to indulge his own heart; having declared both to his
nephew and to his niece that Isabel should be his heir, there came
to him, as a consolation in his misery, the power of repurchasing
a certain fragment of the property which his father, with his
assistance, had sold. The loss of these acres had been always a sore
wound to him, not because of his lessened income, but from a feeling
that no owner of an estate should allow it to be diminished during
his holding of it. He never saw those separated fields estranged from
Llanfeare, but he grieved in his heart. That he might get them back
again he had saved money since Llanfeare had first become his own.
Then had come upon him the necessity of providing for Isabel. But
when with many groans he had decided that Isabel should be the heir,
the money could be allowed to go for its intended purpose. It had
so gone, and then his conscience had become too strong for him, and
another will was made.

It will be seen how he had endeavoured to reconcile things. When
it was found that Henry Jones was working like a steady man at the
London office to which he was attached, that he had sown his wild
oats, then Uncle Indefer began to ask himself why all his dearest
wishes should not be carried out together by a marriage between the
cousins. "I don't care a bit for his wild oats," Isabel had said,
almost playfully, when the idea had first been mooted to her. "His
oats are too tame for me rather than too wild. Why can't he look any
one in the face?" Then her uncle had been angry with her, thinking
that she