r to me as he is,--and so much dearer!"

"But not on that account a Jones. My name is Isabel Brodrick. A woman
not born to be a Jones may have the luck to become one by marriage,
but that will never be the case with me."

"You should not laugh at that which is to me a duty."

"Dear, dear uncle!" she said, caressing him, "if I seemed to
laugh"--and she certainly had laughed when she spoke of the luck of
becoming a Jones--"it is only that you may feel how little importance
I attach to it all on my own account."

"But it is important,--terribly important!"

"Very well. Then go to work with two things in your mind fixed as
fate. One is that you must leave Llanfeare to your nephew Henry
Jones, and the other that I will not marry your nephew Henry Jones.
When it is all settled it will be just as though the old place were
entailed, as it used to be."

"I wish it were."

"So do I, if it would save you trouble."

"But it isn't the same;--it can't be the same. In getting back the
land your grandfather sold I have spent the money I had saved for
you."

"It shall be all the same to me, and I will take pleasure in thinking
that the old family place shall remain as you would have it. I can be
proud of the family though I can never bear the name."

"You do not care a straw for the family."

"You should not say that, Uncle Indefer. It is not true. I care
enough for the family to sympathise with you altogether in what you
are doing, but not enough for the property to sacrifice myself in
order that I might have a share in it."

"I do not know why you should think so much evil of Henry."

"Do you know any reason why I should think well enough of him to
become his wife? I do not. In marrying a man a woman should be able
to love every little trick belonging to him. The parings of his nails
should be a care to her. It should be pleasant to her to serve him in
things most menial. Would it be so to me, do you think, with Henry
Jones?"

"You are always full of poetry and books."

"I should be full of something very bad if I were to allow myself to
stand at the altar with him. Drop it, Uncle Indefer. Get it out of
your mind as a thing quite impossible. It is the one thing I can't
and won't do, even for you. It is the one thing that you ought not to
ask me to do. Do as you like with the property,--as you think right."

"It is not as I like."

"As your conscience bids you, then; and I with myself, which is the
only little th