“But he hasn’t,” said Harry.

“Or he mayn’t have,” said the rector.

“It’s all in the hands of the Almighty,” said Mrs. Annesley, who felt herself bound to retire from the room and to take her daughter with her.

But, when they were alone, both the father and his son were very angry.  “I have done with him forever,” said Harry.  “Let come what may, I will never see him or speak to him again.  A ‘lie,’ and ‘liar!’ He has written those words in that way so as to salve his own conscience for the injustice he is doing.  He knows that I am not a liar.  He cannot understand what a liar means, or he would know that he is one himself.”

“A man seldom has such knowledge as that.”

“Is it not so when he stigmatizes me in this way merely as an excuse to himself?  He wants to be rid of me,—­probably because I did not sit and hear him read the sermons.  Let that pass.  I may have been wrong in that, and he may be justified; but because of that he cannot believe really that I have been a liar,—­a liar in such a determined way as to make me unfit to be his heir.”

“He is a fool, Harry!  That is the worst of him.”

“I don’t think it is the worst.”

“You cannot have worse.  It is dreadful to have to depend on a fool,—­to have to trust to a man who cannot tell wrong from right.  Your uncle intends to be a good man.  If it were brought home to him that he were doing a wrong he would not do it.  He would not rob; he would not steal; he must not commit murder, and the rest of it.  But he is a fool, and he does not know when he is doing these things.”

“I will wash my hands of him.”

“Yes; and he will wash his hands of you.  You do not know him as I do.  He has taken it into his silly head that you are the chief of sinners because you said what was not true to that man, who seems really to be the sinner, and nothing will eradicate the idea.  He will go and marry that woman because he thinks that in that way he can best carry his purpose, and then he will repent at leisure.  I used to tell you that you had better listen to the sermons.”

“And now I must pay for it!”

“Well, my boy, it is no good crying for spilt milk.  As I was saying just now, there is nothing worse than a fool.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

Marmaduke Lodge.

On the 7th of next month two things occurred, each of great importance.  Hunting commenced in the Puckeridge country, and Harry with that famous mare Belladonna was there.  And Squire Prosper was driven in his carriage into Buntingford, and made his offer with all due formality to Miss Thoroughbung.  The whole household, including Matthew, and the cook, and the coachman, and the boy, and the two house-maids, knew what he was going to do.  It would be difficult to say how they knew, because he was a man who never told anything.  He was the last man in England