Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

12. CHAPTER XII. (continued)

"'Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They'll interest ye."

"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising.

"Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands--"

"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!"

"It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."

"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my sphere will be quite a middling one."

"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in passion, but in earnest conviction. "You said you never felt more at home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs. Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room--surely you did!"

"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.

"Was it true?"

"Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps."