But she had not understood the sentence at whose conclusion Travice Arkell had broken down. "That the ties of wife and children must be denied to him for good and all, unless----" Unless what? Unless he let them sacrifice him, would be the real answer. Unless he sacrificed himself, his dearest hopes, every better feeling that his heart possessed, at a golden shrine. But Travice Arkell would have a desperate fight first. The Miss Fauntleroys, co-heiresses of the wealthy old lawyer--who might have died worth more but for his own entanglements in early life--had become intimate and more intimate at the house of William Arkell. Ten thousand pounds were settled on each, and there was other money to divide between them, which was not settled. How Lawyer Fauntleroy had scraped together so much, Westerbury could not imagine, considering he had been so hampered with old claims. Strapping, vulgar, good-humoured damsels, these two, as you have before heard; with as little refinement in looks, words, and manner as their father had possessed before them. Their intimacy had grown, I say, with the Arkell family. Mrs. Arkell courted them to her house; the young ladies were quite eager to frequent it without courting; and it had come to be whispered all over the gossiping town, that Mr. Arkell's son and heir might have either of them for the asking. Perhaps not quite true this, as to the "either," perhaps yes. It was indisputable that both liked him very much; but any hope the younger might have felt disposed to cherish had long been merged in the more recognised claim to him of the elder; recognised by the young ladies only, mind you, in the right, it may be, of her seniorship. Nothing in the world could have been more satisfactory to Mrs. Arkell than this union. She overlooked their want of refinement, and their many other wants of a similar nature--of refinement, indeed, she may have deemed that Travice possessed enough for himself and for a wife too--she thought of the golden hoard in the bank, the firm securities in the three per cent consols, and she pertinaciously cherished the hope and the resolve that Barbara Fauntleroy should become Barbara Arkell. It is well to say "pertinaciously." That Travice had set his resolve against it, she tacitly understood; and once when she went so far as to put her project before him in a cautious hint, Travice had broken out with the ungallant assertion that he would "as soon marry the deuce." But he might have to give in at last. The constant dropping of water on a stone will wear it away; and the constant, unceasing tongue of a woman has been known to break the iron walls of man's will.