“Nothing at all that you can do, I fear.”

“Somebody told us that you were thinking of going abroad.”  Here he shook his head.  “I think it was Harry.”  Here he shook his head and frowned.  “Had you not some idea of going abroad?”

“That is all gone,” he said, solemnly.

“It would have enabled you to get over this disappointment without feeling it so acutely.”

“I do feel it; but not exactly the disappointment.  There I think I have been saved from a misfortune which would certainly have driven me mad.  That woman’s voice daily in my ear could have had no other effect.  I have at any rate been saved from that.”

“What is it, then, that troubles you?”

“Everybody knows that I intended it.  All the country has heard of it.  But yet was not my purpose a good one?  Why should not a gentleman marry if he wants to leave his estate to his own son?”

“Of course he must marry before he can do that.”

“Where was I to get a young lady—­just outside of my own class?  There was Miss Puffle.  I did think of her.  But just at the moment she went off with young Tazlehurst.  That was another misfortune.  Why should Miss Puffle have descended so low just before I had thought of her?  And I couldn’t marry quite a young girl.  How could I expect such a one to live here with me at Buston, where it is rather dull?  When I looked about there was nobody except that horrid Miss Thoroughbung.  You just look about and tell me if there was any one else.  Of course my circle is circumscribed.  I have been very careful whom I have admitted to my intimacy, and the result is that I know almost nobody.  I may say that I was driven to ask Miss Thoroughbung.”

“But why marry at all unless you’re fond of somebody to be attached to?”

“Ah!”

“Why marry at all?  I say.  I ask the question knowing very well why you intended to do it.”

“Then why do you ask?” he said, angrily.

“Because it is so difficult to talk of Harry to you.  Of course I cannot help feeling that you have injured him.”

“It is he that has injured me.  It is he that has brought me to this condition.  Don’t you know that you’ve all been laughing at me down at the rectory since this affair of that terrible woman?” While he paused for an answer to his question Mrs. Annesley sat silent.  “You know it is true.  He and that man whom Molly means to marry, and the other girls, and their father and you, have all been laughing at me.”

“I have never laughed.”

“But the others?” And again he waited for a reply.  But the no reply which came did as well as any other answer.  There was the fact that he had been ridiculed by the very young man whom it was intended that he should support by his liberality.  It was impossible to tell him that a man who had made himself so absurd must expect to be laughed at by his juniors.  There was running through his mind an idea that very much was due to him from Harry; but there was also an idea that something too was due from him.  There was present, even to him, a noble feeling that he should bear all the ignominy with which he was treated, and still be generous.  But he had sworn to himself, and had sworn to Matthew, that he would never forgive his nephew.  “Of course you all wish me to be out of the way?”