"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. "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 to-morrow." "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."