But there was a twinkle of jest in the lady’s eyes all the while which he did not perceive, and which, had he perceived it, he could not have understood.  Her anger was but simulated wrath.  She, too, had thought that it might be well, under circumstances, if she were to marry Mr. Prosper, but had quite understood that those circumstances might not be forthcoming.  “I don’t think it will do at all, my dear,” she had said to Miss Tickle.  “Of course an old bachelor like that won’t want to have you.”

“I beg you won’t think of me for a moment,” Miss Tickle had answered, with solemnity.

“Bother! why can’t you tell the truth?  I’m not going to throw you over, and of course you’d be just nowhere if I did.  I shan’t break my heart for Mr. Prosper.  I know I should be an old fool if I were to marry him; and he is more of an old fool for wanting to marry me.  But I did think he wouldn’t cut up so rough about the ponies.”  And then, when no answer came to the last letter from Soames & Simpson, and the tidings reached her, round from the brewery, that Mr. Prosper intended to be off, she was not in the least surprised.  But the information, she thought, had come to her in an unworthy manner.  So she determined to punish the gentleman, and went out to Buston Hall and called him Peter Prosper.  We may doubt, however, whether she had ever realized how terribly her scourges would wale him.

“And to think that you would let it come round to me in that way, through the young people,—­writing about it just as a joke!”

“I never wrote about it like a joke,” said Mr. Prosper, almost crying.

“I remember now.  It was to your nephew; and of course everybody at the rectory saw it.  Of course they were all laughing at you.”  There was one thing now written in the book of fate, and sealed as certainly as the crack of doom:  no shilling of allowance should ever be paid to Harry Annesley.  He would go abroad.  He said so to himself as he thought of this, and said also that, if he could find a healthy young woman anywhere, he would marry her, sacrificing every idea of his own happiness to his desire of revenge upon his nephew.  This, however, was only the passionate feeling of the moment.  Matrimony had become altogether so distasteful to him, since he had become intimately acquainted with Miss Thoroughbung, as to make any release in that manner quite impossible to him.  “Do you propose to make me any amends?” asked Miss Thoroughbung.

“Money?” said he.

“Yes; money.  Why shouldn’t you pay me money?  I should like to keep three ponies, and to have Miss Tickle’s sister to come and live with me.”

“I do not know whether you are in earnest, Miss Thoroughbung.”

“Quite in earnest, Peter Prosper.  But perhaps I had better leave that matter in the hands of Soames & Simpson,—­very gentleman-like men,—­and they’ll be sure to let you know how much you ought to pay.  Ten thousand pounds wouldn’t be too much, considering the distress to my wounded feelings.”  Here Miss Thoroughbung put her handkerchief up to her eyes.