CHAPTER LI.

MR. PROSPER IS TAKEN ILL.

When Harry Annesley returned from Cheltenham, which he did about the beginning of February, he was a very happy man.  It may be said, indeed, that within his own heart he was more exalted than is fitting for a man mortal,—­for a human creature who may be cut off from his joys to-morrow, or may have the very source of his joy turned into sorrow.  He walked like a god, not showing it by his outward gesture, not declaring that it was so by any assumed grace or arrogant carriage of himself; but knowing within himself that that had happened down at Cheltenham which had all but divested him of humanity, and made a star of him.  To no one else had it been given to have such feelings, such an assurance of heavenly bliss, together with the certainty that, under any circumstances, it must be altogether his own, for ever and ever.  It was thus he thought of himself and what had happened to him.  He had succeeded in getting himself kissed by a young woman.

Harry Annesley was in truth very proud of Florence, and altogether believed in her.  He thought the better of himself because Florence loved him,—­not with the vulgar self-applause of a man who fancies himself to be a lady-killer and therefore a grand sort of fellow, but in conceiving himself to be something better than he had hitherto believed, simply because he had won the heart of this one special girl.  During that half-hour at Cheltenham she had so talked to him, and managed in her own pretty way so to express herself, as to make him understand that of all that there was of her he was the only lord and master.  “May God do so to me, and more also, if to the end I do not treat her not only with all affection, but also with all delicacy of observance.”  It was thus that he spoke to himself of her, as he walked away from the door of Mrs. Mountjoy’s house in Cheltenham.

From thence he went back to Buston, and entered his father’s house with all that halo of happiness shining round his heart.  He did not say much about it, but his mother and his sisters felt that he was altered; and he understood their feelings when his mother said to him, after a day or two, that “it was a great shame” that they none of them knew his Florence.

“But you will have to know her—­well.”

“That’s of course; but it’s a thousand pities that we should not be able to talk of her to you as one whom we know already.”  Then he felt that they had, among them all, acknowledged her to be such as she was.

There came to the rectory some tidings of the meeting which had taken place at the Hall between his uncle and Miss Thoroughbung.  It was Joe who brought to them the first account; and then farther particulars leaked out among the servants of the two houses.  Matthew was very discreet; but even Matthew must have spoken a word or two.  In the first place there came the news that Mr. Prosper’s anger against