was a road builder and might have been the wealthiest man

"I cannot tell anything about that. I should have endeavoured, I think, to make her happy. She has certainly run counter to my happiness."

"What -- as to this very moment! I shall leave Stalham tomorrow." "Why should you do that? Let her go if one must go."

"That is just what I want to prevent. Why should she lose her little pleasure?"

"You don't suppose that we can make the house happy to her now! Why should we care to do so when she will have driven you away?" He sat silent for a minute or two looking at the fire, with his hands on his two knees. "You must acknowledge, Jonathan," continued she, "that I have taken kindly to this Ayala of yours."

"But it cannot be that she should be the same to us simply as a young lady, staying here as it were on her own behalf, as she was when we regarded her as your possible wife. Then every little trick and grace belonging to her endeared itself to us because we regarded her as one who was about to become one of ourselves. But what are her tricks and graces to us now?"

"They are all the world to me," said the Colonel.

"But you must wipe them out of your memory -- unless, indeed, you mean to ask her again."

"I do not say so; but I do not wish to rob myself of the chance. It may be that I shall. Of course I should tomorrow if I thought there was a hope. Tomorrow there would be none -- but I should like to know, that I could find her again in hands so friendly as yours, if at the end of a month I should think myself strong enough to encounter the risk of another refusal. Would Sir Harry allow her to remain here for another month?"