The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"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.