Though she had strenuously opposed her father through the whole of the conversation above given, still, as it had gone on, she had resolved to do as he would her; not indeed, that is, to marry this suitor, but to turn him over in her mind yet once again, and find out whether it would be possible that she should do so.  She had dismissed him on that former occasion, and had not since given a thought to him, except as to a nuisance of which she had so far ridded herself.  Now the nuisance had come again, and she was to endeavor to ascertain how far she could accustom herself to its perpetual presence without incurring perpetual misery.  But it has to be acknowledged that she did not begin the inquiry in a fair frame of mind.  She declared to herself that she would think about it all the night and all the morning without a prejudice, so that she might be able to accept him if she found it possible.

But at the same time there was present to her a high, black stone wall, at one side of which stood she herself while Mr. Barry was on the other.  That there should be any clambering over that wall by either of them she felt to be quite impossible, though at the same time she acknowledged that a miracle might occur by which the wall would be removed,

So she began her thinking, and used all her father’s arguments.  Mr. Barry was honest and good, and would not ill-treat her.  She knew nothing about him, but would take all that for granted as though it were gospel,—­because her father had said so.  And then it was to her a fact that she was by no means good-looking,—­the meaning of which was that no other man would probably want her.  Then she remembered her father’s words,—­“To me your face is the sweetest thing on earth to look upon.”  This she did believe.  Her plainness did not come against her there.  Why should she rob her father of the one thing which to him was sweet in the world?  And to her, her father was the one noble human being whom she had ever known.  Why should she rob herself of his daily presence?  Then she told herself,—­as she had told him,—­that she had never had five minutes free conversation with Mr. Barry in her life.  That certainty was no reason why free conversation should not be commenced.  But then she did not believe that free conversation was within the capacity of Mr. Barry.  It would never come, though she might be married to him for twenty years.  He too might, perhaps, talk about his business; but there would be none of those considerations as to radical good or evil which made the nucleus of all such conversations with her father.  There would be a flatness about it all which would make any such interchange of words impossible.  It would be as though she had been married to a log of wood, or rather a beast of the field, as regarded all sentiment.  How much money would be coming to him?  Now her father had never told her how much money was coming to him.  There had been no allusion to that branch of the subject.