It was the great happiness of her life that among those three or four her own brother was the foremost.

Will Belton's love for his sister amounted almost to veneration, and his devotion to her was so great, that in all the affairs of his life he was prepared to make her comfort one of his first considerations.

And she, knowing this, had come to fear that she might be an embargo on his prosperity, and a stumbling-block in the way of his success.

It had occurred to her that he would have married earlier in life if she had not been, as it were, in his way; and she had threatened him playfully,--for she could be playful,--that she would leave him if he did not soon bring a mistress home to Plaistow Hall.

"I will go to uncle Robert," she had said.