Then there came the angry letter from Cousin Henry, containing two points which had to be considered. There was the offer to her to come to Llanfeare, and live there as though she was herself the owner. That, indeed, did not require much consideration. It was altogether out of the question, and only dwelt in her thoughts as showing how quickly the man had contrived to make himself odious to every one about the place. His uncle, he said, had made the place a nest of hornets to him. Isabel declared that she knew why the place was a nest of hornets. There was no one about Llanfeare to whom so unmanly, so cringing, so dishonest a creature would not be odious. She could understand all that. But then there was the other point, and on that her mind rested long. "I think you ought to be ashamed of what you said to me,--so soon after the old man's death." She sat long in silence thinking of it, meditating whether he had been true in that,--whether it did behove her to repent her harshness to the man. She remembered well her words;--"We take presents from those we love, not from those we despise." They had been hard words--quite unjustifiable unless he had made himself guilty of something worse than conduct that was simply despicable. Not because he had been a poor creature, not because he had tormented the old man's last days by an absence of all generous feeling, not because he had been altogether unlike what, to her thinking, a Squire of Llanfeare should be, had she answered him with those crushing words. It was because at the moment she had believed him to be something infinitely worse than that. Grounding her aversion on such evidence as she had,--on such evidence as she thought she had,--she had brought against him her heavy accusation. She could not tell him to his face that he had stolen the will, she could not accuse him of felony, but she had used such quick mode of expression as had come to her for assuring him that he stood as low in her esteem as a felon might stand. And this she had done when he was endeavouring to perform to her that which had been described to him as a duty! And now he had turned upon her and rebuked her,--rebuked her as he was again endeavouring to perform the same duty,--rebuked her as it was so natural that a man should do who had been subjected to so gross an affront!