 think
of settling, pray. Follow my example, if you like. You can have one of my
cottages, or a place built for you. Anything to keep a man from destroying the
sense of stability about one. In London, my dear old fellow, you lose your
identity. What are you there? I ask you, what? One has the feeling of the house
crumbling when a man is perpetually for shifting and cannot fix himself. Here
you are known, you can study at your ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell
you honestly, I feel it myself; a week of London literally drives me home to
discover the individual where I left him. Be advised. You don't mean to go.«
    »I have the intention,« said Vernon.
    »Why?«
    »I've mentioned it to you.«
    »To my face?«
    »Over your shoulder, is generally the only chance you give me.«
    »You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge. As to the reason, I might
hear a dozen of your reasons, and I should not understand one. It's against your
interests and against my wishes. Come, friend, I am not the only one you
distress. Why, Vernon, you yourself have said that the English would be very
perfect Jews if they could manage to live on the patriarchal system. You said
it, yes, you said it! - but I recollect it clearly. Oh! as for your
double-meanings, you said the thing, and you jeered at the incapacity of English
families to live together, on account of bad temper; and now you are the first
to break up our union! I decidedly do not profess to be perfect Jew, but I do
...«
    Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his bride
and his cousin. He raised his face, appeared to be consulting his eyelids, and
resolved to laugh: »Well, I own it, I do like the idea of living patriarchally.«
He turned to Clara. »The Rev. Doctor one of us!«
    »My father?« she said.
    »Why not?«
    »Papa's habits are those of a scholar.«
    »That you might not be separated from him, my dear.«
    Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her father,
mentally analyzing the kindness, in which at least she found no unkindness,
scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.
    »We might propose
