Then Harry Annesley’s name was mentioned.  “I think I’ve done for that fellow,” said Augustus.

“What have you done?”

“I’ve cooked his goose.  In the first place, his uncle has stopped his allowance, and in the second place the old fellow is going to marry a wife.  At any rate, he has quarrelled with Master Harry a outrance.  Master Harry has gone back to the parental parsonage, and is there eating the bread of affliction and drinking the waters of poverty.  Flossy Mountjoy may marry him if she pleases.  A girl may marry a man now without leave from anybody.  But if she does my dear cousin will have nothing to eat.”

“And you have done this?”

“‘Alone I did it, boy.’”

“Then it’s an infernal shame.  What harm had he ever done you?  For me I had some ground of quarrel with him, but for you there was none.”

“I have my own quarrel with him also.”

“I quarrelled with him—­with a cause.  I do not care if I quarrel with him again.  He shall never marry Florence Mountjoy if I can help it.  But to rob a fellow of his property I think a very shabby thing.”  Then Augustus got up and walked out of the chambers into the street, and Mountjoy soon followed him.

“I must make him understand that he must leave this at once,” said Augustus to himself, “and if necessary I must order the supplies to be cut off.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE SCARBOROUGH CORRESPONDENCE.

It was as Mountjoy had said.  The squire had written to him a letter inviting him to Tretton, and telling him that it would be the best home for him till death should have put Tretton into other hands.  Mountjoy had thought the matter over, sitting in the easy-chair in his brother’s room, and had at last declined the invitation.  As his letter was emblematic of the man, it may be as well to give it to the reader: 

“My dear father,—­I don’t think it will suit me to go down to Tretton at present.  I don’t mind the cards, and I don’t doubt that you would make it better than this place.  But, to tell the truth, I don’t believe a word of what you have told to the world about my mother, and some of these days I mean to have it out with Augustus.  I shall not sit quietly by and see Tretton taken out of my mouth.  Therefore I think I had better not go to Tretton.

“Yours truly,

“MOUNTJOY SCARBOROUGH.”

This had not at all surprised the father, and had not in the least angered him.  He rather liked his son for standing up for his mother, and was by no means offended at the expression of his son’s incredulity.  But what was there in the prospect of a future lawsuit to prevent his son coming to Tretton?  There need be no word spoken as to the property.  Tretton would be infinitely more comfortable than those rooms in Victoria Street, and he, was aware that the hospitality of Victoria Street would not be given in an ungrudging spirit.  “I shouldn’t like it,” said the old squire to himself as he lay quiet on his sofa.  “I shouldn’t like at all to be the humble guest of Augustus.  Augustus would certainly say a nasty word or two.”