afforded her. She could almost hear his outcry.

The business of the hour demanded more of her than a seeking for
refreshment. She had been invited to join the consultation of her uncle
with his lawyer. Mr. Adister tossed her another letter from Vienna, of
that morning's delivery. She read it with composure. It became her task
to pay no heed to his loss of patience, and induce him to acquiesce in
his legal adviser's view which was, to temporise further, present an
array of obstacles, and by all possible suggestions induce the princess
to come over to England, where her father's influence with her would have
a chance of being established again; and it might then be hoped that she,
who had never when under sharp temptation acted disobediently to his
wishes at home, and who certainly would not have dreamed of contracting
the abhorred alliance had she been breathing the air of common sense
peculiar to her native land, would see the prudence, if not the solemn
obligation, of retaining to herself these family possessions. Caroline
was urgent with her uncle to act on such good counsel. She marvelled at
his opposition, though she detected the principal basis of it.

Mr. Adister had no ground of opposition but his own intemperateness.
The Welsh grandmother's legacy of her estates to his girl, overlooking
her brothers, Colonel Arthur and Captain David, had excessively vexed
him, despite the strong feeling he entertained for Adiante; and not
simply because of the blow he received in it unexpectedly from that old
lady, as the last and heaviest of the long and open feud between them,
but also, chiefly, that it outraged and did permanent injury to his ideas
of the proper balance of the sexes. Between himself and Mrs. Winnion
Rhys the condition of the balance had been a point of vehement
disputation, she insisting to have it finer up to equality, and he that
the naturally lighter scale should continue to kick the beam. Behold now