Jonathan would have married the
girl's mother--Janet Merryweather--but for your mother's influence."

"How in the deuce! You mean he feared the effect on her?"

"He broke it to her once--his intention, I mean--and for several days
afterwards we quite despaired of her life. It was then that she made him
promise--he was quite distracted with remorse for he adored Angela--that
he would never allude to it again while she was alive. We thought then
that it would be only for a short while, but she has outlived him ten
years in spite of her heart disease. One can never rely on doctors, you
know."

"But what became of the girl--of Janet Merryweather, I mean?"

"That was the sad part, though it happened so long ago--twenty
years--that people have almost forgotten. It seems that your uncle had
been desperate about her for a time--before Angela came to live with
him--and Janet counted rather recklessly upon his keeping his word and
marrying her as he had promised. When her trouble came she went quite
out of her mind--perfectly harmless, I believe, and with lucid intervals
in which she suffered from terrible melancholia. Her child inherits many
of her characteristics, I am told, though I've never heard any harm
of the girl except that she flirts with all the clowns in the
neighbourhood."

"Uncle Jonathan appears to have been too ready with his promises, but,
I suppose, he thought there was a difference between his obligation to
Janet Merryweather and to his brother's widow?"

"There was a difference, of course. Janet Merryweather could hardly have
had Angela's sensitive feelings--or at least it's a comfort to think
that, even if it happens not to be true. Before the war one hardly
ever heard of that class, mother used to say, it was so humble and
unpresuming--but in the last twenty-five or thirty years it has
overrun everything and most of the land about here has passed into its
possession."

She checked herself breathlessly, surprised and indignant that she
should have expressed her feelings so openly.

"Yes, I dare say," returned Jonathan--"The miller Revercomb is a good
example, I imagine, of just the thing you are speaking of--a kind of new
plant that has sprung up like fire-weed out of the ashes. Less than half
a century produced him, but he's here to stay, of that I am positive.
After all, why shouldn't he, when we get down to the question? He--or
the stock he represents, of course--is already getting hold of the
s