In the end, Fan, more as a means of vindicating Harry’s disinterestedness than as a precaution for her own independence in days to come, allowed half of her portion to be tied up for her personal use if she should so ordain it. She would gladly have given up to Harry every shilling of this reserve, after he had disposed of the rest, had it not been that her foresight for him was not to say infinitely greater than his for himself or for her, but for any she could have exercised on her own account. Harry had become to his wife, in all worldly respects, like one of those minors or infants in the eyes of the law, with regard to whom it is his protector’s duty to defend him from the dangers of his own helplessness and to hedge him round with artificial barriers. Still Fan was eminently an upright woman, and she would have fought against her despair and nerved herself to strip—not herself alone but Harry, of her remaining possessions, in order to discharge the debts which he had contrived to incur in spite of her, rather than let them fall upon her brother, if she had not known that even supposing she could get Oliver to forego what all concerned in it called his ‘loans,’ it would only be a form. It could not prevent him from being impoverished in the long run, because it must be on Oliver the little family at Copley Grange Farm would have to depend, till its mistress was strong enough, if she ever were strong again, to struggle to secure independence—not merely for herself and Harry, but for Horace whose oars were shipped in Harry’s boat. There was no difficulty on Harry’s side; he had never been overburdened with scruples, and he hardly suffered from any in accepting Oliver Constable’s interposition to free him—Harry, from his mess at Oliver’s cost. For indubitably there were money penalties, the extent of which even Fan did not guess, to pay all round, before the volunteer yeoman-farmer could be withdrawn from the ranks of the yeomen, released from the obligations of his lease, and granted a discharge by his creditors, while it was Oliver who, in each instance, paid the defalcation. Oliver did not grudge it so much when he found that Harry, sick of the whole concern, readily consented to go abroad at once with his wife, brother, and brother-in-law—who appreciated the concession and was conscious of a lurking sweetness and graciousness in his unstable prodigal’s freedom from resentment at the old sap and grinder Constable’s interference and assumption, however carefully masked, or however dearly bought, of the reins of government. Yet, after all, paradoxical as it may sound, dogged resistance would most assuredly have promised better than unconditional submission for Harry’s ultimate attainment of moral manhood.