“Things have been unkind to us, Isabel, and have separated us.”
“Nothing shall separate us.” Then she paused for a moment. She had thought of it all, and now had to pause before she could execute her purpose. She had got her plan ready, but it required some courage, some steadying of herself to the work before she could do it. Then she came close to him—close up to him, looking into his face as he stood over her, not moving his feet, but almost retreating with his body from her close presence. “William,” she said, “take me in your arms and kiss me. How often have you asked me during the last month! Now I have come for it.”
He paused a moment as though it were possible to refuse, as though his collected thoughts and settled courage might enable him so to outrage her in her petition. Then he broke down, and took her in his arms, and pressed her to his bosom, and kissed her lips, and her forehead, and her cheeks—while she, having once achieved her purpose, attempted in vain to escape from his long embrace.
“Now I shall be your wife,” she said at last, when her breath had returned to her.
“It should not be so.”
“Not after that? Will you dare to say so to me—after that? You could never hold up your head again. Say that you are happy? Tell me that you are happy. Do you think that I can be happy unless you are happy with me?” Of course he gave her all the assurances that were needed, and made it quite unnecessary that she should renew her prayer.
“And I beg, Mr. Owen, that for the future you will come to me, and not make me come to you.” This she said as she was taking her leave. “It was very disagreeable, and very wrong, and will be talked about ever so much. Nothing but my determination to have my own way could have made me do it.” Of course he promised her that there should be no occasion for her again to put herself to the same inconvenience.
XXIV
Conclusion
Isabel spent one pleasant week with her lover at Hereford, and then was summoned into Carmarthenshire. Mr. Apjohn came over at her father’s invitation, and insisted on taking her back to Llanfeare.
“There are a thousand things to be done,” he said, “and the sooner you begin to do them the better. Of course you must live at the old house, and you had better take up your habitation there for a while before this other change is made.” The other change was of course the coming marriage, with the circumstances of which the lawyer had been made acquainted.
Then there arose other questions. Should her father go with her or should her lover? It was, however, at last decided that she should go alone as regarded her family, but under the care of Mr. Apjohn. It was she who had been known in the house, and she who had better now be seen there as her uncle’s representative.
“You will have to be called Miss Jones,” said the lawyer, “Miss Indefer Jones. There will be a form, for which we shall have to pay, I am afraid; but we had better take the name at once. You will have to undergo a variety of changes in signing your name. You will become first Miss Isabel Brodrick Indefer Jones, then Mrs. William Owen, then, when he shall have gone through the proper changes, Mrs. William Owen Indefer Jones. As such I hope you may remain till you shall be known as the oldest inhabitant of Carmarthenshire.”
Mr. Apjohn took her to Carmarthen, and hence on to Llanfeare. At the station there were many to meet her, so that her triumph, as she got into the carriage, was almost painful to her. When she heard the bells ring from the towers of the parish churches, she could hardly believe that the peals were intended to welcome her back to her old home. She was taken somewhat out of her way round by the creek and Coed, so that the little tinkling of her own parish church might not be lost upon her. If this return of hers to the estate was so important to others as to justify these signs, what must it be to her and how deep must be the convictions as to her own duties?
At the gate of Coed farmyard the carriage stopped, and the old farmer came out to say a few words to her.
“God bless you, Miss Isabel; this is a happy sight to see.”
“This is so kind of you, Mr. Griffith.”
“We’ve had a bad time of it, Miss Isabel;—not that we wished to quarrel with your dear uncle’s judgment, or that we had a right to say much against the poor gentleman who has gone;—but we expected you, and it went against the grain with us to have our expectations disappointed. We shall always look up to you, miss; but, at the same time, I wish you joy with all my heart of the new landlord you’re going to set over us. Of course that was to be expected, but you’ll be here with us all the time.” Isabel, while the tears ran down her cheeks, could only press the old man’s hand at parting.
“Now, my dear,” said Mr. Apjohn, as they went on to the house, “he has only said just what we’ve all been feeling. Of course it has been stronger with the tenants and servants than with others. But all round the country it has been the same. A man, if an estate belong to himself personally, can do what he likes with it, as he can
