zarus, he was convinced (erroneously) that he was a Harden
by blood and by temperament, and of course if he had only been a
Harden by name, and not a Jewdwine, Court House and the great Harden
Library would have been his instead of his cousin Lucia's. He knew
that his grandfather had wished them to be his. Lucia's mother was
dead long ago; and when his uncle Sir Frederick definitely renounced
the domestic life, Lucia and Lucia alone stood between him and the
inheritance that should have been his. This hardly constituted a
reason for being fond of Lucia.

His grandfather had wished him to be fond of her. But not until
Jewdwine was five and twenty and began to feel the primordial manhood
stirring in his scholarly blood did he perceive that his cousin Lucia
was not a hindrance but a way. The way was so obvious that it was no
wonder that he did not see it all at once. He did not really see it
till Sir Joseph sent for him on his death-bed.

"There's been some mistake, Horace," Sir Joseph had then said. "Your
mother should have been the boy and your uncle Frederick the girl.
Then Lucia would have been a Jewdwine, and you a Harden."

And Horace had said, "I'm afraid I can't be a Harden, sir; but is
there any reason why Lucia--?"

"I was coming to that," said Sir Joseph. But he never came to it.
Horace, however, was in some way aware that the same idea had occurred
to both of them. Whatever it was, the old man had died happy in it.

There was no engagement, only a something altogether intangible and
vague, understood to be an understanding. And Lucia adored him. If she
had not adored him he might have been urged to something irretrievable
and definite. As it was, there was no need, and nothing could have
been more soothing than the golden concord of that understanding.

Needless to say if Lucia had been anybody but Lucia, such a solution
would have been impossible. He was fastidious. He would not have
married a woman simply because his grandfather wished it; and he could
not have married a woman simply because she inherited property that
ought to have been his. And he could not have married any woman who
would have suspected him of such brutality. He could only marry a
woman who was consummately suitable to him, in whom nothing jarred,
nothing offended; and his cousin Lucia was such a woman. The very fact
that she was his cousin was an assurance of her rightness. It followed
that, love being the expression of that perfect