There was nothing that he could say.  Whether she were laughing at him, as he thought to be most probable, or whether there was some grain of truth in the demand which she made, he found it equally impossible to make any reply.  There was nothing that he could say; nor could he absolutely turn her out of the room.  But after ten minutes’ farther continuation of these amenities, during which it did at last come home to his brain that she was merely laughing at him, he began to think that he might possibly escape, and leave her there in possession of his chamber.

“If you will excuse me, Miss Thoroughbung, I will retire,” he said, rising from the sofa.

“Regularly chaffed out of your own den!” she said, laughing.

“I do not like this interchange of wit on subjects that are so serious.”

“Interchange!  There is very little interchange, according to my idea.  You haven’t said anything witty.  What an idea of interchange the man has!”

“At any rate I will escape from your rudeness.”

“Now, Peter Prosper, before you go let me ask you one question.  Which of the two has been the rudest to the other?  You have come and asked me to marry you, and have evidently wished to back out of it from the moment in which you found that I had ideas of my own about money.  And now you call me rude, because I have my little revenge.  I have called you Peter Prosper, and you can’t stand it.  You haven’t spirit enough to call me Matty Thoroughbung in reply.  But good-bye, Mr. Prosper,—­for I never will call you Peter again.  As to what I said to you about money, that, of course, is all bosh.  I’ll pay Soames’s bill, and will never trouble you.  There’s your letter, which, however, would be of no use, because it is not signed.  A very stupid letter it is.  If you want to write naturally you should never copy a letter.  Good-bye, Mr. Prosper—­Peter that never shall be.”  Then she got up and walked out of the room.

Mr. Prosper, when he was left alone, remained for a while nearly paralyzed.  That he should have ever entertained the idea of making that woman his wife!  Such was his first thought.  Then he reflected that he had, in truth, escaped from her more easily than he had hoped, and that she had certainly displayed some good qualities in spite of her vulgarity and impudence.  She did not, at any rate, intend to trouble him any farther.  He would never again hear himself called Peter by that terribly loud voice.  But his anger became very fierce against the whole family at the rectory.  They had ventured to laugh at him, and he could understand that, in their eyes, he had become very ridiculous.

He could see it all,—­the manner in which they had made fun of him, and had been jocose over his intended marriage.  He certainly had not intended to be funny in their eyes.  But, while he had been exercising the duty of a stern master over them, and had been aware of his own extreme generosity in his efforts to forgive his nephew, that very nephew had been laughing at him, in conjunction with the nephew of her whom he had intended to make his wife!  Not a shilling, again, should ever be allowed to Harry Annesley.  If it could be so arranged, by any change of circumstances, he might even yet become the father of a family of his own.