r that he had suggested to himself.

CHAPTER IX

Alone at Llanfeare

On the day after the reading of the will, Henry Indefer Jones, Esq.,
of Llanfeare, as he was now to be called, was left alone in his
house, his cousin Isabel having taken her departure from the place
in the manner proposed by her. And the lawyer was gone, and the
doctor, and the tenants did not come near him, and the butler and the
housekeeper kept out of his way, and there was probably no man in all
South Wales more lonely and desolate than the new Squire of Llanfeare
on that morning.

The cruelty of it, the injustice of it, the unprecedented hardness of
it all! Such were the ideas which presented themselves to him as hour
after hour he sat in the book-room with his eyes fixed on the volume
of Jeremy Taylor's sermons. He had done nothing wrong,--so he told
himself,--had not even coveted anything that did not belong to him.
It was in accordance with his uncle's expressed desire that he had
come to Llanfeare, and been introduced to the tenants as their future
landlord, and had taken upon himself the place of the heir. Then
the old man had announced to him his change of mind; but had not
announced it to others, had not declared his altered purpose to the
world at Llanfeare, and had not at once sent him back to his London
office. Had he done so, that would have been better. There would have
been a gross injustice, but that would have been the end of it, and
he would have gone back to his London work unhappy indeed, but with
some possibility of life before him. Now it seemed as though any mode
of living would be impossible to him. While that fatal paper remained
hidden in the fatal volume he could do nothing but sit there and
guard it in solitude.

He knew well enough that it behoved him as a man to go out about the
estate and the neighbourhood, and to show himself, and to take some
part in the life around him, even though he might be miserable and
a prey to terror whilst he was doing so. But he could not move from
his seat till his mind had been made up as to his future action. He
was still in fearful doubt. Through the whole of that first day he
declared to himself that his resolution had not yet been made,--that
he had not yet determined what it would be best that he should do.
It was still open to him to say that at any moment he had just found
the will. If he could bring himself to do so he might rush off to
Carmarthen with the document