Her husband had a still harder life as being a free agent, and having the whole weight of the decision upon his shoulders. It was not to be supposed that he could free himself entirely from all sense of guilt towards the child whom in his heart he loved most. He had resolved to punish her and he clung to his resolution with all the determination of a narrow mind. He had said that she should never marry the man who was nobody, that if she held by him he would give her fortune to Rose. And she did hold by him, with an obstinacy equal to his own. Was it possible that he should bear this and give her reason to laugh at his words as mere sound and fury signifying nothing? No, whatever he might have to suffer for it, no! Perhaps, however, the great secret of Mr. Mountford’s obstinate adherence to a determination which he could not but know to be unjust and cruel--and of many more of the cruelties and eccentricities that people perpetrate by their wills--lay in the fact that, after all, though he took so much trouble to make his will, he had not the slightest intention of dying. If a man does not die, a monstrous will is no more than an angry letter--a thing which wounds and vexes, perhaps, and certainly is intended to wound and vex, and which suffices to blow off a great deal of the steam of family quarrels; but which does no real harm to anybody, in that there is plenty of time to change it, and to make all right again some time or other. Another thing which assisted him in getting over his own doubts and disquietudes was the strenuous, almost violent, opposition of Mr. Loseby, who did not indeed refuse at last to carry out his wishes, but did so with so many protests and remonstrances that Mr. Mountford’s spirit was roused, and he forgot the questionings of his own conscience in the determination to defend himself against those of this other man who had, he declared to himself, nothing whatever to do with it, and no right to interfere. Could not a man do what he would with his own? The money was his own, the land his own, and his children too were his own. Who else had anything to do with the arrangements he chose to make for them? It was of his grace and favour if he gave them his money at all. He was not bound to do so. It was all his: he was not responsible to any mortal; it was a pretty piece of impudence that Loseby should venture to take so much upon him. This opposition of Loseby’s did him all the good in the world. It set him right with himself. But still those packets of papers, always accompanied by a letter, were annoying to him. ‘I send you the draft of the new codicil, but you must allow me to observe----’ ‘I return draft with the corrections you have made, but I must once more entreat you to pause and reconsider----’ What did the old fellow mean? Did he think he had any right to speak--a country attorney, a mere man of business? To be sure he was an old friend--nobody said he was not an old friend; but