“Mr. Prosper,” she said, “I hope I see you quite well this morning, and that I have not disturbed you at your toilet.”  That she had done so was evident, from the fact that Matthew, with the dressing-gown and slippers, was seen disappearing into the bedroom.

“I am not very well, thank you,” said Mr. Prosper, rising from his chair, and offering her his hand with the coldest possible salutation.

“I am sorry for that,—­very.  I hope it is not your indisposition which has prevented you from coming to see me.  I have been expecting you every day since Soames wrote his last letter.  But it’s no use pretending any longer.  Oh, Peter, Peter!” This use of his Christian name struck him absolutely dumb, so that he was unable to utter a syllable.  He should, first of all, have told her that any excuse she had before for calling him by his Christian name was now at an end.  But there was no opening for speech such as that.  “Well,” she continued, “have you got nothing to say to me?  You can write flippant letters to other people, and turn me into ridicule glibly enough.”

“I have never done so.”

“Did you not write to Joe Thoroughbung, and tell him you had given up all thoughts of having me?”

“Joe!” he exclaimed.  His very surprise did not permit him to go farther, at the moment, than this utterance of the young man’s Christian name.

“Yes, Joe,—­Joe Thoroughbung, my nephew, and yours that is to be.  Did you not write and tell him that everything was over?”

“I never wrote to young Mr. Thoroughbung in my life.  I should not have dreamed of such a correspondence on such a subject.”

“Well, he says you did.  Or, if you didn’t write to Joe himself, you wrote to somebody.”

“I may have written to somebody, certainly.”

“And told them that you didn’t mean to have anything farther to say to me?” That traitor Harry had now committed a sin worse that knocking a man down in the middle of the night and leaving him bleeding, speechless, and motionless; worse than telling a lie about it;—­worse even than declining to listen to sermons read by his uncle.  Harry had committed such a sin that no shilling of allowance should evermore be paid to him.  Even at this moment there went through Mr. Prosper’s brain an idea that there might be some unmarried female in England besides Miss Puffle and Miss Thoroughbung.  “Peter Prosper, why don’t you answer like a man, and tell me the honest truth?” He had never before been called Peter Prosper in his whole life.

“Perhaps you had better let me make a communication by letter,” he said.  At that very moment the all but completed epistle was lying on the table before him, where even her eyes might reach it.  In the flurry of the moment he covered it up.

“Perhaps that is the letter which has taken you so long to write?” she said.

“It is the letter.”