d for, without a friend and
without a roof of her own over her head! And yet, though her name was
Brodrick, she, too, was a Jones; and her father, though an attorney,
had come of a family nearly as good as his own. In no case could
it be right that she should marry the grandson of old Thomas Owen.
Therefore, hitherto, he had never again referred to that proposal of
marriage. Should she again have spoken of it his answer might perhaps
have been less decided; but neither had she again spoken of the
clergyman.

All this was hard upon Isabel, who, if she said nothing, still
thought of her lover. And it must be acknowledged also that though
she did not speak, still she thought of her future prospects. She had
laughed at the idea of being solicitous as to her inheritance. She
had done so in order that she might thereby lessen the trouble of
her uncle's mind; but she knew as well as did another the difference
between the position which had been promised her as owner of
Llanfeare, and that to which she would be reduced as the stepdaughter
of a stepmother who did not love her. She knew, too, that she had
been cold to William Owen, giving him no sort of encouragement,
having seemed to declare to him that she had rejected him because
she was her uncle's heiress. And she knew also,--or thought that
she knew,--that she was not possessed of those feminine gifts which
probably might make a man constant under difficulties. No more had
been heard of William Owen during the last nine months. Every now and
then a letter would come to her from one of her younger sisters, who
now had their own anxieties and their own loves, but not a word was
there in one of them of William Owen. Therefore, it may be said that
the last charge in her uncle's purpose had fallen upon her with
peculiar hardness.

But she never uttered a complaint, or even looked one. As for
utterance there was no one to whom she could have spoken it. There
had never been many words between her and her own family as to the
inheritance. As she had been reticent to her father so had he to
her. The idea in the attorney's house at Hereford was that she was
stubborn, conceited, and disdainful. It may be that in regard to her
stepmother there was something of this, but, let that be as it might,
there had been but little confidence between them as to matters at
Llanfeare. It was, no doubt, supposed by her father that she was to
be her uncle's heir.

Conceited, perhaps, she was as