She knew that any opposition to her proposal on the part of those who were still supposed to be her guardians would only be founded on an objection to it as something unwomanly, venturous, and revolutionary, and not by any means the result of any grief for her going away. Ever since her mother's death and her father's second marriage she had only chafed at existence, and found those around her disagreeable, and no doubt made herself disagreeable to them. She had ceased to feel any respect for her father when he married again, and he knew it and became cold and constrained with her. Only just before his death had there been anything like a revival of their affection for each other. He had been a man of some substance and authority in his town, had built houses, and got together property, and he left his daughter a not inconsiderable annuity as a charge upon his property, and placed her under the guardianship of the elderly and respectable Nonconformist minister, who, as luck would have it, afterward married his young widow. Minola had seen so many marriages during her short experience, and had disliked two at least of them so thoroughly, that she was much inclined to say with one of her heroes that there should be no more of them. For a long time she had made up her mind that when she came of age she would go to London and live there. She still wanted a few months of the time of independence, but the manner in which Mr. Augustus Sheppard was pressed upon her by himself and others made her resolve to anticipate the course of the seasons a little, and go away at once. In London she made up her mind that she would lead a life of enchantment: of delightful and semi-savage solitude, in the midst of the crowd; of wild independence and scorn of all the ways of men, with books at her command, with the art galleries and museums, of which she had read so much, always within easy reach, and the streets which were alive for her with such sweet and dear associations all around her.