“I don’t think she’s at all anxious,” said Harry.

“You might marry almost at once.”

“That’s what I should like.”

“And come and live here.”

“In this house?”

“Why not?  I’m nobody.  You’d soon find that I’m nobody.”

“That’s nonsense, Uncle Prosper.  Of course you’re everybody in your own house.”

“You might endure it for six months in the year.”

Harry thought of the sermons, but resolved at once to face them boldly.  “I am only thinking how generous you are.”

“It’s what I mean.  I don’t know the young lady, and perhaps she mightn’t like living with an old gentleman.  In regard to the other six months, I’ll raise the two hundred and fifty pounds to five hundred pounds.  If she thinks well of it, she should come here first and let me see her.  She and her mother might both come.”  Then there was a pause.  “I should not know how to bear it,—­I should not, indeed.  But let them both come.”

After some farther delay this was at last decided on.  Harry went away supremely happy and very grateful, and Mr. Prosper was left to meditate on the terrible step he had taken.

CHAPTER LVIII.

MR. SCARBOROUGH’S DEATH.

It is a melancholy fact that Mr. Barry, when he heard the last story from Tretton, began to think that his partner was not so wide-awake as he had hitherto always regarded him.  As time runs on, such a result generally takes place in all close connections between the old and the young.  Ten years ago Mr. Barry had looked up to Mr. Grey with a trustful respect.  Words which fell from Mr. Grey were certainly words of truth, but they were, in Mr. Barry’s then estimation, words of wisdom also.  Gradually an altered feeling had grown up; and Mr. Barry, though he did not doubt the truth, thought less about it.  But he did doubt the wisdom constantly.  The wisdom practised under Mr. Barry’s vice-management was not quite the same as Mr. Grey’s.  And Mr. Barry had come to understand that though it might be well to tell the truth on occasions, it was folly to suppose that any one else would do so.  He had always thought that Mr. Grey had gone a little too fast in believing Squire Scarborough’s first story.  “But you’ve been to Nice, yourself, and discovered that it is true,” Mr. Grey would say.  Mr. Barry would shake his head, and declare that in having to deal with a man of such varied intellect as Mr. Scarborough there was no coming at the bottom of a story.

But there had been no question of any alterations in the mode of conducting the business of the firm.  Mr. Grey had been, of course, the partner by whose judgment any question of importance must ultimately be decided; and, though Mr. Barry had been sent to Nice, the Scarborough property was especially in Mr. Grey’s branch.  He had been loud in declaring the iniquity of his client, but had altogether made up his mind that the iniquity had been practised; and all the clerks in the office had gone with him, trusting to his great character for sober sagacity.  And Mr. Grey was not a man who would easily be put out of his high position.