“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 tomorrow?” Then she paused, waiting to find what might be the effect of her eloquence.
“I do not acknowledge papa’s right or yours to press me to marry any man.”
“But I suppose you acknowledge your right to be as good as your word? Here is the money; you have only got to take it.”
“What you mean is that I ought to acknowledge my obligation to be as good as my word. I do. I told my father that I would not be a burden to him, and I am bound to keep to that. He will have understood that at the present moment I am breaking my promise through a mistake of Uncle Indefer’s which I could not have anticipated.”
“You are breaking your promise because you will not accept money that is your own.”
“I am breaking my promise, and that is sufficient. I will go out of the house and will cease to be a burden. If I only knew where I could go, I would begin tomorrow.”
“That is all nonsense,” said Mrs. Brodrick, getting up and bursting out of the room in anger. “There is a man ready to marry you, and there is the money. Anybody can see with half an eye what is your duty.”
Isabel, with all the eyes that she had, could not see what was her duty. That it could not be her duty to take a present of money from the man whom she believed to be robbing her of the estate she felt quite sure. It could not be her duty to bring poverty on a man whom she loved—especially not as she had refused to confer wealth upon him. It was, she thought, clearly her duty not to be a burden upon her father, as she had told him that no such burden should fall upon him. It was her duty, she thought, to earn her own bread, or else to eat none at all. In her present frame of mind she would have gone out of the house on the moment if anyone would have accepted her even as a kitchenmaid. But there was no one to accept her. She had questioned her father on the matter, and he had ridiculed her idea of earning her bread. When she had spoken of service, he had become angry with her. It was not thus that he could be relieved. He did not want to see his girl a maidservant or even a governess. It was not thus that she could relieve him. He simply wanted to drive her into his views, so that she might accept the comfortable income which was at her disposal, and become the wife of a gentleman whom everyone esteemed. But she, in her present frame of mind, cared little for any disgrace she might bring on others by menial service. She was told that she was a burden, and she desired to cease to be burdensome.
Thinking it over all that night, she resolved that she would consult Mr. Owen himself. It would, she thought, be easy—or if not easy at any rate feasible—to make him understand that there could be no marriage. With him she would be on her own ground. He, at least, had no authority over her, and she knew herself well enough to be confident of her own strength. Her father had a certain right to insist. Even her stepmother had a deputed right. But her lover had none. He should be made to understand that she would not marry him—and then he could advise her as to that project of being governess, housemaid, schoolmistress, or whatnot.
On the following morning he came, and was soon closeted with her. When he arrived, Isabel was sitting with Mrs. Brodrick and her sisters, but they soon packed up their hemmings and sewings, and took themselves off, showing that it was an understood thing that Isabel and Mr. Owen were to be left together. The door was no sooner closed than he came up to her, as though to embrace her, as though to put an arm round her waist before she had a moment to retreat, preparing to kiss her as though she were already his own. She saw it all in a moment. It was as though, since her last remembered interview, there had been some other meeting which she had forgotten—some meeting at which she had consented to be his wife. She could not be angry with him. How can a girl be angry with a man whose
