ing that I have in the world, will do as I like, or as
my conscience bids me."

These last words she spoke almost roughly, and as she said them she
left him, walking out of the room with an air of offended pride.
But in this there was a purpose. If she were hard to him, hard and
obstinate in her determination, then would he be enabled to be so
also to her in his determination, with less of pain to himself. She
felt it to be her duty to teach him that he was justified in doing
what he liked with his property, because she intended to do what
she liked with herself. Not only would she not say a word towards
dissuading him from this change in his old intentions, but she would
make the change as little painful to him as possible by teaching him
to think that it was justified by her own manner to him.

For there was a change, not only in his mind, but in his declared
intentions. Llanfeare had belonged to Indefer Joneses for many
generations. When the late Squire had died, now twenty years ago,
there had been remaining out of ten children only one, the eldest,
to whom the property now belonged. Four or five coming in succession
after him had died without issue. Then there had been a Henry Jones,
who had gone away and married, had become the father of the Henry
Jones above mentioned, and had then also departed. The youngest, a
daughter, had married an attorney named Brodrick, and she also had
died, having no other child but Isabel. Mr Brodrick had married
again, and was now the father of a large family, living at Hereford,
where he carried on his business. He was not very "well-to-do" in the
world. The new Mrs Brodrick had preferred her own babies to Isabel,
and Isabel when she was fifteen years of age had gone to her bachelor
uncle at Llanfeare. There she had lived for the last ten years,
making occasional visits to her father at Hereford.

Mr Indefer Jones, who was now between seventy and eighty years old,
was a gentleman who through his whole life had been disturbed by
reflections, fears, and hopes as to the family property on which he
had been born, on which he had always lived, in possession of which
he would certainly die, and as to the future disposition of which
it was his lot in life to be altogether responsible. It had been
entailed upon him before his birth in his grandfather's time, when
his father was about to be married. But the entail had not been
carried on. There had come no time in which this Indefer Jones