“Then after all you do love me, father. I call nothing love that loves anything else. And how much,” she asked, with her arms round his neck, and her red lips curving to a crafty whisper--“how much should I be worth, if I married a man I despise and dislike? Enough for my grave, and no more, papa; just the size of your small book-table.” Here she fell away, lost in her father’s arms, and for the moment could only sigh, with her lips and eyelids quivering; and Sir Roland watching her pale loving face, was inclined to hate his own mother. “You shall marry no one, my own child,” he whispered through her unbraided hair; “no one whom you do not love dearly, and who is not thoroughly worthy of you.” “Then I will not marry any one, papa,” she answered, with a smile reviving; “for I do not love any one a bit, papa, except my own father, and my own brother; and Uncle Struan, of course, and so on, in an outer and milder manner. And as for being worthy of me, I am not worth very much, I know. Still, if I am worth only half an acre, I must be too good for that Captain Chapman.” CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN THE DEADLY BREACH. The stern and strong will of a single man is a very fine thing for weaker men--and still more so for women--to dwell upon. But the stern strong will of a host of men, set upon one purpose, and resolved to win it or die for it, is a power that conquers the powers of earth and of nature arrayed against them. The British army was resolved to carry by storm Badajos; and their vigorous manner of setting about it, and obstinate way of going on with it, overcame at last the strength of all that tried to stand before them. This was the more to their credit, because--the worst of all things for a man to get over--even the weather itself was against them. Nothing makes a deeper depression in the human system than long spite of weather does. The sense of luck is still over us all (in spite of philosophy and mathematics), and of all the behaviour of fortune, what comes home to our roofs and hats so impressively as the weather does? Now, thoroughly as these British men were resolved to get within the wall, with equal thoroughness very brave Frenchmen were resolved to keep them out. And these had the weather in their favour; for it is an ill wind that blows no one any good; and the rain that rains on the just and unjust seems to have a preference for the latter. Though it must be acknowledged in the present case, that having a view to justice, a man of equal mind might say there was not too much on either side. At any rate, the rain kept raining, for fear of any mistake among them.