“You are quite logical, and look upon the matter in altogether a proper light.  As you have ruined yourself so often, and done your best to ruin those that belong to you, what hope can there be?  About this money that I have left you, I do not know that anything farther can be said,—­unless I leave it all to an hospital.  It is better that you should have it and throw it away among the gamblers, than that it should fall into the hands of Augustus.  Besides, the demand is moderate.  No doubt it is only a beginning, but we will see.”

Then he got out his check-book, and made Mountjoy himself write the check, including the two sums which had been borrowed.  And he dictated the letter to Mr. Grey: 

“MY DEAR GREY,—­I return the money which Mountjoy has had from you,—­two hundred and twenty-seven pounds, and twenty.  That, I think, is right.  You are the most foolish man I know with your money.  To have given it to such a scapegrace as my son Mountjoy!  But you are the sweetest and finest gentleman I ever came across.  You have got your money now, which is a great deal more than you can have expected or ought to have obtained.  However, on this occasion you have been in great luck.

“Yours faithfully,

“JOHN SCARBOROUGH.”

This letter his son himself was forced to write, though it dealt altogether with his own delinquencies; and yet, as he told himself, he was not sorry to write it, as it would declare to Mr. Grey that he had himself acknowledged at once his own sin.  The only farther punishment which his father exacted was that his son should himself ride into Tretton and post the letter before he ate his dinner.

“I’ve got my money,” said Mr. Grey, waving the check as he went into his dressing-room, with Dolly at his heels.

“Who has paid it?”

“Old Scarborough; and he made Mountjoy write the letter himself, calling me an old fool for lending it.  I don’t think I was such a fool at all.  However, I’ve got my money, and you may pay the bet and not say anything more about it.”

CHAPTER L.

THE LAST OF MISS THOROUGHBUNG.

Mr. Prosper, with that kind of energy which was distinctively his own, had sent off his letter to Harry Annesley, with his postscript in it about his blighted matrimonial prospects,—­a letter easy to be written,—­before he had completed his grand epistle to Miss Thoroughbung.  The epistle to Miss Thoroughbung was one requiring great consideration.  It had to be studied in every word, and re-written again and again with the profoundest care.  He was afraid that he might commit himself by an epithet.  He dreaded even an adverb too much.  He found that a full stop expressed his feelings too violently, and wrote the letter again, for the fifth time, because of the big initial which followed the full stop.  The consequence of all this long delay was, that Miss Thoroughbung had heard the news, through the brewery, before it reached her in its legitimate course.  Mr. Prosper had written his postscript by accident, and, in writing it, had forgotten the intercourse between his brother-in-law’s house and the Buntingford people.  He had known well of the proposed marriage; but he was a man who could not think of two things at the same time, and thus had committed the blunder.