It was still October when Harry Annesley went down to Buston, and the Mountjoys had just reached Brussels. Mr. Grey had made his visit to Tretton and had returned to London. Harry went home on an understanding,—on the part of his mother, at any rate,—that he should remain there till Christmas. But he felt himself very averse to so long a sojourn. If the Hall and park were open to him he might endure it. He would take down two or three stiff books which he certainly would never read, and would shoot a few pheasants, and possibly ride one of his future brother-in-law\'s horses with the hounds. But he feared that there was to be a quarrel by which he would be debarred from the Hall and the park; and he knew, too, that it would not be well for him to shoot and hunt when his income should have been cut off. It would be necessary that some great step should be taken at once; but then it would be necessary, also, that Florence should agree to that step. He had a modest lodging in London, but before he started he prepared himself for what must occur by giving notice. "I don\'t say as yet that I shall give them up; but I might as well let you know that it\'s possible." This he said to Mrs. Brown, who kept the lodgings, and who received this intimation as a Mrs. Brown is sure to do. But where should he betake himself when his home at Mrs. Brown\'s had been lost? He would, he thought, find it quite impossible to live in absolute idleness at the rectory. Then in an unhappy frame of mind he went down by the train to Stevenage, and was there met by the rectory pony-carriage.

He saw it all in his mother\'s eye the moment she embraced him. There was some terrible trouble in the wind, and what could it be but his uncle? "Well, mother, what is it?"

"Oh, Harry, there is such a sad affair up at the Hall!"

"Is my uncle dead?"

"Dead! No!"

"Then why do you look so sad?—

    "\'Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
    So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
    Drew Priam\'s curtain in the dead of night.\'"

"Oh Harry do not laugh. Your uncle says such dreadful things!"

"I don\'t care much what he says. The question is—what does he mean to do?"

"He declares that he will cut you off altogether."

"That is sooner said than done."

"That is all very well, Harry; but he can do it. Oh, Harry! But come and sit down and talk to me. I told your father to be out, so that I might have you alone; and the dear girls are gone into Buntingford."

"Ah, like them! Thoroughbung will have enough of them."

"He is our only happiness now."

"Poor Thoroughbung! I pity him if he has to do happiness for the whole household."

"Joshua is a most excellent young man. Where we should be without him I do not know." The flourishing young brewer was named Joshua, and had been known to Harry for some years, though never as yet known as a brother-in-law.

"I am sure he is; particularly as he has chosen Molly to be his wife. He is just the young man who ought to have a wife."

"Of course he ought."

"Because he can keep a family. But now about my uncle. He is to perform this ceremony of cutting me off. Will he turn out to have had a wife and family in former ages? I have no doubt old Scarborough could manage it, but I don\'t give my uncle credit for so much cleverness."

"But in future ages—" said the unhappy mother, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.

"You mean that he is going to have a family?"

"It is all in the hands of Providence," said the parson\'s wife.

"Yes; that is true. He is not too old yet to be a second Priam, and have his curtains drawn the other way. That\'s his little game, is it?"

"There\'s a sort of rumor about, that it is possible."

"And who is the lady?"

"You may be sure there will be no lack of a lady if he sets his mind upon it. I was turning it over in my mind, and I thought of Matilda Thoroughbung."

"Joshua\'s aunt!"

"Well; she is Joshua\'s aunt, no doubt. I did just whisper the idea to Joshua, and he says that she is fool enough for anything. She has twenty-five thousand pounds of her own, but she lives all by herself."

"I know where she lives,—just out of Buntingford, as you go to Royston. But she\'s not alone. Is Uncle Prosper to marry Miss Tickle also?" Miss Tickle was an estimable lady living as companion to Miss Thoroughbung.

"I don\'t know how they may manage; but it has to be thought of, Harry. We only know that your uncle has been twice to Buntingford."

"The lady is fifty, at any rate."

"The lady is barely forty. She gives out that she is thirty-six. And he could settle a jointure on her which would leave the property not worth having."

"What can I do?"

"Yes, indeed, my dear; what can you do?"

"Why is he going to upset all the arrangements of my life, and his life, after such a fashion as this?"

"That\'s just what your father says."

"I suppose he can do it. The law will allow him. But the injustice would be monstrous. I did not ask him to take me by the hand when I was a boy and lead me into this special walk of life. It has been his own doing. How will he look me in the face and tell me that he is going to marry a wife? I shall look him in the face and tell him of my wife."

"But is that settled?"

"Yes, mother; it is settled. Wish me joy for having won the finest lady that ever walked the earth." His mother blessed him,—but said nothing about the finest lady,—who at that moment she believed to be the future bride of Mr. Joshua Thoroughbung. "And when I shall tell my uncle that it is so, what will he say to me? Will he have the face then to tell me that I am to be cut out of Buston? I doubt whether he will have the courage."

"He has thought of that, Harry."

"How thought of it, mother?"

"He has given orders that he is not to see you."

"Not to see me!"

"So he declares. He has written a long letter to your father, in which he says that he would be spared the agony of an interview."

"What! is it all done, then?"

"Your father got the letter yesterday. It must have taken my poor brother a week to write it."

"And he tells the whole plan,—Matilda Thoroughbung, and the future family?"

"No, he does not say anything about Miss Thoroughbung He says that he must make other arrangements about the property."

"He can\'t make other arrangements; that is, not until the boy is born. It may be a long time first, you know."

"But the jointure?"

"What does............