"No prospects? Nonsense! Because that dishonourable rascal, William Blake-Gordon, has chosen to forfeit his engagement, and make himself a by-word in the mouths of men, are you to renounce the world? Many a better gentleman than he, my dear, will be seeking you before a few months have gone by." "I shall never marry," was her firm answer. "Never, never. Whether I joined the Sisters, or not; whether I retired from the world, or mixed to my dying day in all its pomps and gaieties; still I should never marry. So you see, Uncle James, I have now to make my future, and to create for myself an object in life." "Well, we'll leave the question of marrying. Meanwhile your present home must be with me, Mary Ursula. I cannot spare you. I should like you to make up your mind to stay in it always, unless other and nearer ties shall call you forth." "You are very kind, Uncle James; you always have been kind. But I--I must be independent," she added with a smile and a slight flush. "Forgive the seeming ingratitude, uncle dear." "Very independent you would be, if you joined those living-by-rule women!" "In one sense I should be thoroughly independent, uncle. My income will be most welcome to them, for they are, as you know, very poor----" "Your income!" he interrupted, half scoffingly. "I wish--I wish, Mary--you would allow me to augment it!" "And I shall be close to Greylands' Rest," she continued, with a slight shake of the head, for this proposal to settle money upon her had become quite a vexations question. "I shall be able to come here to see you often." "Mary Ursula, I will hear no more of this," he cried, quite passionately. "You shall never do it with my consent." She rose and laid her pleading hands upon his. "Uncle, pardon me, but my mind is made up. I have not decided hastily, or without due consideration. By day and by night I have dwelt upon it--I--I have prayed over it, uncle--and I plainly see it is the best thing for me. I would sooner spend my days there than anywhere, because I shall be near you." "And I want you to be near me. But not in a nunnery." "It is not a nunnery now you know, Uncle James, though the building happens still to bear the name. If I take up my abode there, I take no vows, remember. I do not renounce the world. Should any necessity arise--though I think it will not--for me to resume my place in society, I am at full Liberty to put off my grey gown and bonnet and do so." "What do you think your father would have said to this, Mary Ursula?" "Were my father alive, Uncle James, the question never could have arisen; my place would have been with him. But I think--if he could see me now under all these altered circumstances--I think he would say to me Go." There was no turning her. James Castlemaine saw it: and when she quitted the room he felt that the step, unless some special hindrance intervened, would be carried out.