one who will lend you a horse to hunt for two months.”  Harry shook his head, and wandered away miserable through the fields, and would not in these days even set his foot upon the soil of the park.  “He was not going to intrude any farther,” he said to the rector.  “You can come to church, at any rate,” his father said, “for he certainly will not be there while you are at the parsonage.”  Oh yes, Harry would go to the church.  “I have yet to understand that Mr. Prosper is owner of the church, and the path there from the rectory is, at any rate, open to the public;” for at Buston the church stands on one corner of the park.

This went on for two or three days, during which nothing farther was said by the family as to Harry’s woes.  A letter was sent off to Mrs. Brown, telling her that the lodgings would not be required any longer, and anxious ideas began to crowd themselves on Harry’s mind as to his future residence.  He thought that he must go back to Cambridge and take his rooms at St. John’s and look for college work.  Two fatal years, years of idleness and gayety, had been passed, but still he thought that it might be possible.  What else was there open for him?  And then, as he roamed about the fields, his mind naturally ran away to the girl he loved.  How would he dare again to look Florence in the face?  It was not only the two hundred and fifty pounds per annum that was gone:  that would have been a small income on which to marry.  And he had never taken the girl’s own money into account.  He had rather chosen to look forward to the position as squire of Buston, and to take it for granted that it would not be very long before he was called upon to fill the position.  He had said not a word to Florence about money, but it was thus that he had regarded the matter.  Now the existing squire was going to marry, and the matter could not so be regarded any longer.  He saw half a dozen little Prospers occupying half a dozen little cradles, and a whole suite of nurseries established at the Hall.  The name of Prosper would be fixed at Buston, putting it altogether beyond his reach.

In such circumstances would it not be reasonable that Florence should expect him to authorize her to break their engagement?  What was he now but the penniless son of a poor clergyman, with nothing on which to depend but a miserable stipend, which must cease were he to marry?  He knew that he ought to give her back her troth; and yet, as he thought of doing so, he was indignant with her.  Was love to come to this?  Was her regard for him to be counted as nothing?  What right had he to expect that she should be different from any other girl?

Then he was more miserable than ever, as he told himself that such would undoubtedly be her conduct.  As he walked across the fields, heavy with the mud of a wet October day, there came down a storm of rain which wet him through.  Who does not know the sort of sensation which falls upon a man when he feels that even the elements have turned against him,—­how he buttons up his coat and bids the clouds open themselves upon his devoted bosom?