"Who shalln't have th' chance o' spendin' none o' my brass," said Uncle Jacob. "Do you yer that, young un? Stanburne dorther shall spend none o' _my_ brass. If you wed her, yer father 'll 'ave to keep both on ye, an' all yer chilther beside. He's worth about five hundred a-year, is your father; and I'm worth--nobody knows what I 'm worth." Young Jacob knew both his uncle and his grandmother far too intimately to attempt discussion with either of them; but the news of Colonel Stanburne's bankruptcy, which in their view had put an end to the dream of a possible alliance with his daughter, wore a very different aspect to the young lover. An attachment existed between himself and Edith Stanburne, of which both were perfectly conscious, and yet nothing had been said about it openly on either side. Young Jacob Ogden had felt every year more and more keenly the width of the social gulf which separated them, though his education at Eton and Oxford and his constantly increasing prospects of future riches had already begun to build a bridge across the gulf. Even in his best days Colonel Stanburne had not been what in Lancashire is considered a rich man; in his best days, he had been poorer than the leading manufacturers of Sootythorn; and Jacob Ogden's mill had of itself cost more money than any squire of Wenderholme had ever possessed, whilst Jacob Ogden had property of many kinds besides his mill, and a huge lump of money lying by ready for immediate investment. The superiority in money had therefore for some years been entirely on the side of the Ogdens; but, although aristocracy in England is in reality based on wealth, it has a certain poetic sense which delights also in antiquity and honors. Jacob Ogden and his money might have been agreeable to the matter-of-fact side of English aristocratic feeling, but they were unsatisfying to its poetic sense. Young Jacob was clearly aware of this, and so indeed, in a cruder form, was his uncle. So long therefore as the Colonel was prosperous, or apparently prosperous, the Ogdens knew that the obstacles in the way of a marriage were all but insurmountable, and no proposal had ever been made. The Colonel's ruin changed the relative situation very considerably; and, if young Jacob Ogden could have permitted himself to rejoice in an event so painful to one who had always been kind to him, he would have rejoiced now. He did, indeed, feel a degree of hope about Edith Stanburne to which he had been a stranger for some years.