not favourable.  As to the young people’s marriage, that was his brother’s affair, not his.  But as to the partnership, that was a serious matter.  Who ever heard of a partnership being given away merely because a man wanted to marry?  He would keep to his promise, and if the stipulated moneys were forthcoming, Herbert Onslow should become a partner,—in four years.  Nor was the reply from England more favourable.  The alliance was regarded by all the Onslows very favourably.  Nothing could be nicer than such a marriage!  They already knew dear Isa so well by description!  But as for the money,—that could not in any way be forthcoming till the end of the stipulated period.

“And what shall we do?” said Herbert to Papa Heine.

“You must wait,” said he.

“For four years?” asked Herbert.

“You must wait,—as I did,” said Papa Heine.  “I was forty before I could marry.”  Papa Heine, however, should not have forgotten to say that his bride was only twenty, and that if he had waited, she had not.

“Isa,” Herbert said to her, when all this had been fully explained to her, “what do you say now?”

“Of course it is all over,” said she, very calmly.

“Oh, Isa, is that your love?”

“No, Herbert, that is not my love; that is my discretion;” and she even laughed with her mild low laughter, as she answered him.  “You know you are too impatient to wait four years, and what else therefore can I say?”

“I wonder whether you love me?” said Herbert, with a grand look of injured sentiment.

“Well; in your sense of the word I do not think I do.  I do not love you so that I need make every one around us unhappy because circumstances forbid me to marry you.  That sort of love would be baneful.”

“Ah no, you do not know what love means!”

“Not your boisterous, heartbreaking English love, Herbert.  And, Herbert, sometimes I think you had better go home and look for a bride there.  Though you fancy that you love me, in your heart you hardly approve of me.”

“Fancy that I love you!  Do you think, Isa, that a man can carry his heart round to one customer after another as the huckster carries his wares?”

“Yes; I think he can.  I know that men do.  What did your hero Waverley do with his heart in that grand English novel which you gave me to read?  I am not Flora Mac Ivor, but you may find a Rose Bradwardine.”

“And you really wish me to do so?”

“Look here, Herbert.  It is bad to boast, but I will make this boast.  I am so little selfish, that I desire above all that you should do that which may make you most happy and contented.  I will be quite frank with you.  I love you well enough to wait these four years with the hope of becoming your wife when they are over.  But you will think but little of my love when I tell you that this waiting would not make me unhappy.  I should go on as I do now, and be contented.”

“Oh heavens!” sighed Herbert.

“But as I know that this would not suit you,—as I feel sure that such delay would gall you every day, as I doubt whether it would not make you sick of me long before the four years be over,—my advice is, that we should let this matter drop.”

He now walked up to her and took her hand, and as he did so there was something in his gait and look and tone of voice that stirred her heart more sharply than it had yet been stirred.  “And even that would not make you unhappy,” he said.

She paused before she replied, leaving her hand in his, for he was contented to hold it without peculiar pressure.  “I will not say so,” she replied.  “But, Herbert, I think that you press me too hard.  Is it not enough that I leave you to be the arbiter of my destiny?”

“I would learn the very truth of your heart,” he replied.

“I cannot tell you that truth more plainly.  Methinks I have told it too plainly already.  If you wish it, I will hold myself as engaged to you,—to be married to you when those four years are past.  But, remember, I do not advise it.  If you wish it, you shall have back your troth.  And that I think will be the wiser course.”

But neither alternative contented Herbert Onslow, and at the time he did not resolve on either.  He had some little present income from home, some fifty pounds a year or so, and he would be satisfied to marry on that and on his salary as a clerk; but to this papa and mamma Heine would not consent;—neither would Isa.

“You are not a saving, close man,” she said to him when he boasted of his economies.  “No Englishmen are.  You could not live comfortably in two small rooms, and with bad dinners.”

“I do not care a straw about my dinners.”

“Not now that you are a lover, but you would do when you were a husband.  And you change your linen almost every day.”

“Bah!”

“Yes; bah, if you please.  But I know what these things cost.  You had better go to England and fetch a rich wife.  Then you will become a partner at once, and Uncle Hatto won’t snub you.  And you will be a grand man, and have a horse to ride on.”  Whereupon Herbert went away in disgust.  Nothing in all this made him so unhappy as the feeling that Isa, under all their joint privations, would not be unhappy herself.  As far as he could see, all this made no difference in Isa.

But, in truth, he had not yet read Isa’s character very thoroughly.  She had spoken truly in saying that she knew nothing of that boisterous love which was now tormenting him and making him gloomy; but nevertheless she loved him.  She, in her short life, had learnt many lessons of self-denial; and now with reference to this half-promised husband she would again have practised such a lesson.  Had he agreed at once to go from her, she would have balanced her own account within her own breast, and have kept to herself all her sufferings.  There would have been no outward show of baffled love,—none even in the colour of her cheeks; for such was the nature of her temperament.  But she did suffer for him.  Day by day she began to think that his love, though boisterous as she had at first called it, was more deep-seated than she had believed.  He made no slightest sign that he would accept any of those proffers which she had made him of release.  Though he said so loudly that this waiting for four years was an impossibility, he spoke of no course that would be more possible,—except that evidently impossible course of an early marriage.  And thus, while he with redoubled vehemence charged her with coolness and want of love, her love waxed warmer and warmer, and his happiness became the chief object of her thoughts.  What could she do that he might no longer suffer?

And then he took a step which was very strange to them all.  He banished himself altogether from the house, going away again into lodgings.  “No,” he said, on the morning of his departure, “I do not release you.  I will never release you.  You are mine, and I have a right so to call you.  If you choose to release yourself, I cannot help it; but in doing so you will be forsworn.”

“Nay, but, Herbert, I have sworn to nothing,” said she, meaning that she had not been formally betrothed to him.

“You can do as you please; it is a matter of conscience; but I tell you what are my feelings.  Here I cannot stay, for I should go mad; but I shall see you occasionally;—perhaps on Sundays.”

“Oh, Herbert!”

“Well, what would you have?  If you really cared to see me it would not be thus.  All I ask of you now is this, that if you decide,—absolutely decide on throwing me over, you will tell me at once.  Then I shall leave Munich.”

“Herbert, I will never throw you over.”  So they parted, and Onslow went forth to his new lodgings.

Her promise that she would never throw him over was the warmest word of love that she had ever spoken, but even that was said in her own quiet,