"Not to me! They will not have been hard to me when I shall have carried my point with you." "I was forced to appear before your eyes as the heiress of my uncle." "Has that made any difference with me?" "And I was forced to refuse you in obedience to him who had adopted me." "I understand all that very completely." "Then he made a new will, and left me some money." "Of all that I know, I think, every particular." "But the money is not there." At this he nodded his head as though smiling at her absurdity in going back over circumstances which were so well understood by both of them. "The money is offered to me by my cousin, but I will not take it." "As to that I have nothing to say. It is the one point on which, when we are married, I shall decline to give you any advice." "Mr Owen," and now she came close to him, but still ready to spring back should it be necessary, "Mr Owen, I will tell you what I have told no one else." "Why me?" "Because I trust you as I trust no one else." "Then tell me." "There is another will. There was another will rather, and he has destroyed it." "Why do you say that? You should not say that. You cannot know it." "And, therefore, I say it only to you, as I would to my own heart. The old man told me so--in his last moments. And then there is the look of the man. If you could have seen how his craven spirit cowered beneath my eyes!" "One should not judge by such indications. One cannot but see them and notice them; but one should not judge." "You would have judged had you seen. You could not have helped judging. Nothing, however, can come of it, except this,--that not for all the world would I take his money." "It may be right, Isabel, that all that should be discussed between you and me,--right if you wish it. It will be my delight to think that there shall be no secret between us. But, believe me, dearest, it can have no reference to the question between us." "Not that I should be absolutely penniless?" "Not in the least." "But it will, Mr Owen. In that even my father agrees with me." In this she was no doubt wrong. Her father had simply impressed upon her the necessity of taking the money because of her lover's needs. "I will not be a burden at any rate to you; and as I cannot go to you without being a burden, I will not go at all. What does it matter whether there be a little more suffering or a little less? What does it matter?" "It matters a great deal to me." "A man gets over that quickly, I think." "So does a woman,--if she be the proper sort of woman for getting over her difficulties of that kind. I don't think you are." "I will try." "I won't." This he said, looking full into her face. "My philosophy teaches me to despise the grapes which hang too high, but to make the most of those which come within my reach. Now, I look upon you as being within my reach." "I am not within your reach." "Yes; pardon me for my confidence, but you are. You have confessed that you love me." "I do."