spects of rising, than not preserve his
integrity.

James and Isabel were not merciful to their uncle when they could speak
of him without restraint; and began to conjecture his intentions with
regard to them.

'You don't wish to become an appendage to Cheveleigh?' said James,
fondly.

'I! who never knew happiness till I came here!'

'I do not know what my uncle may propose,' said James, 'but I know you
coincide in my determination that he shall never interfere with the
duties of my office.'

'You do not imagine that he wishes it?'

'I know he wishes I were not in Holy Orders. I knew he disliked it at
the time of my ordination; but if he wished me to act according to his
views, he should have given himself the right to dictate.'

'By not neglecting you all your youth.'

'Not that I regret or resent what concerns myself; but it was his
leaving me a burden on my grandmother that drove me to become a
clergyman, and a consistent one I will be, not an idle heir-apparent to
this estate, receiving it as his gift, not my own birthright.'

'An idle clergyman! Never! never!' cried Isabel. 'I should not
believe it was you! And the school--you could not leave it just as
your plans are working, and the boys improving?'

'Certainly not; it would be fatal to abandon it to that stick, Powell.
Ah! Isabel,' as he looked at her beautiful countenance, 'how I pity the
man who has not a high-minded wife! Suppose you came begging and
imploring me not to give any umbrage to the man, because you so doted
upon diamonds.'

'The less merit when one has learnt that they are very cold hard
stones,' said Isabel, smiling.

Isabel was a high-minded wife, but she would have been a still better
one if her loving admiration had allowed her to soften James, or to
question whether pride and rancour did not lurk unperceived in the
midst of the really high and sound motives that prompted him.

While their grandmother could only see Oliver on the best side, James
and Isabel could only see him on the worst, and lost the greatness of
the design in the mercenary habits that exclusive perseverance in it
had produced. It had been a false greatness, but they could not grant
the elevation of mind that had originally conceived it.

The following day was Sunday, and nothing worse took place than little
skirmishes, in which the uncle and nephew's retort and rejoinder were
so drolly similar, that Clara found herself thinking of Miss
Faithfull's t