f it very often, till
I have told myself that conduct such as that would be inexpressibly
base. What! to eat his bread after refusing him mine when it was
believed to be so plentiful! I certainly have not face enough to do
that,--neither face nor courage for that. There are ignoble things
which require audacity altogether beyond my reach."

"Then you must accept the money from your cousin."

"Certainly not," said Isabel; "neither that nor yet the position
which Mr Owen will perhaps offer me again."

"Of course he will offer it to you."

"Then he must be told that on no consideration can his offer be
accepted."

"This is nonsense. You are both dying for each other."

"Then we must die. But as for that, I think that neither men nor
young women die for love now-a-days. If we love each other, we must
do without each other, as people have to learn to do without most of
the things that they desire."

"I never heard of such nonsense, such wickedness! There is the money.
Why should you not take it?"

"I can explain to you, mother," she said sternly, it being her wont
to give the appellation but very seldom to her stepmother, "why I
should not take Mr Owen, but I cannot tell you why I cannot take my
cousin's money. I can only simply assure you that I will not do so,
and that I most certainly shall never marry any man who would accept
it."

"I consider that to be actual wickedness,--wickedness against your
own father."

"I have told papa. He knows I will not have the money."

"Do you mean to say that you will come here into this house as an
additional burden, as a weight upon your poor father's shoulder, when
you have it in your power to relieve him altogether? Do you not know
how pressed he is, and that there are your brothers to be educated?"
Isabel, as she listened to this, sat silent, looking upon the ground,
and her stepmother went on, understanding nothing of the nature of
the mind of her whom she was addressing. "He had reason to expect,
ample reason, that you would never cost him a shilling. He had been
told a hundred times that you would be provided for by your uncle. Do
you not know that it was so?"

"I do. I told him so myself when I was last here before Uncle
Indefer's death."

"And yet you will do nothing to relieve him? You will refuse this
money, though it is your own, when you could be married to Mr Owen
to-morrow?" Then she paused, waiting to find what might be the effect
of her eloquence.

"