d terms that he insists on? He expects
me to increase my five hundred a year to two thousand, before he will
sanction our marriage."

"Yes, dear, he told me that."

"I have as much chance of earning fifteen hundred a year, Regina, as I
have of being made King of England. Did he tell you _that?"_

"He doesn't agree with you, dear--he thinks you might earn it (with your
abilities) in ten years."

This time it was the turn of Amelius to look at Regina in helpless
consternation. "Ten years?" he repeated. "Do you coolly contemplate
waiting ten years before we are married? Good heavens! is it possible
that you are thinking of the money? that _you_ can't live without
carriages and footmen, and ostentation and grandeur--?"

He stopped. For once, even Regina showed that she had spirit enough to
be angry. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak to me in that
way!" she broke out indignantly. "If you have no better opinion of me
than that, I won't marry you at all--no, not if you had fifty thousand a
year, sir, to-morrow! Am I to have no sense of duty to my uncle--to
the good man who has been a second father to me? Do you think I am
ungrateful enough to set his wishes at defiance? Oh yes, I know you
don't like him! I know that a great many people don't like him. That
doesn't make any difference to Me! But for dear uncle Farnaby, I might
have gone to the workhouse, I might have been a starving needlewoman, a
poor persecuted maid-of-all-work. Am I to forget that, because you have
no patience, and only think of yourself? Oh, I wish I had never met with
you! I wish I had never been fool enough to be as fond of you as I am!"
With that confession, she turned her back on him, and took refuge in her
handkerchief once more.

Amelius stood looking at her in silent despair. After the tone in
which she had spoken of her obligations to her uncle, it was useless to
anticipate any satisfactory result from the exertion of his influence
over Regina. Recalling what he had seen and heard, in Mrs. Farnaby's
room, Amelius could not doubt that the motive of pacifying his wife was
the motive which had first led Farnaby to receive Regina into his house.
Was it unreasonable or unjust to infer, that the orphan child must have
been mainly indebted to Mrs. Farnaby's sense of duty to the memory of
her sister for the parental protection afforded to her, from that time
forth? It would have been useless, and worse than useless, to place
before Regina