Chapter LI

Showing How Things Settled Themselves At The Rectory

When Harry’s letter, with the tidings of the fate of his cousins, reached Florence at Stratton, the whole family was, not unnaturally, thrown into great excitement.  Being slow people, the elder Burtons had hardly as yet realized the fact that Harry was again to be accepted among the Burton Penates as a pure divinity.  Mrs. Burton, for some weeks past, had grown to be almost sublime in her wrath against him.  That a man should live and treat her daughter as Florence was about to be treated!  Had not her husband forbidden such a journey, as being useless in regard to the expenditure, she would have gone up to London that she might have told Harry what she thought of him.  Then came the news that Harry was again a divinity—­an Apollo, whom the Burton Penates ought only to be too proud to welcome to a seat among them!

And now came this other news that this Apollo was to be an Apollo indeed!  When the god first became a god again, there was still a cloud upon the minds of the elder Burtons as to the means by which the divinity was to be sustained.  A god in truth, but a god with so very moderate an annual income—­unless, indeed, those old Burtons made it up to an extent which seemed to them to be quite unnatural!  There was joy among the Burtons, of course, but the joy was somewhat dimmed by these reflections as to the slight means of their Apollo.  A lover who was not an Apollo might wait; but, as they had learned already, there was danger in keeping such a god as this suspended on the tenter-hooks of expectation.

But now there came the further news!  This Apollo of theirs had already a place of his own among the gods of Olympus.  He was the eldest son of a man of large fortune, and would be a baronet!  He had already declared that he would marry at once—­that his father wished him to do so, and that an abundant income would be forthcoming.  As to his eagerness for an immediate marriage, no divinity in or out of the heavens could behave better.  Old Mrs. Burton, as she went through the process of taking him again to her heart, remembered that that virtue had been his even before the days of his backsliding had come—­a warm-hearted, eager, affectionate divinity, with only this against him, that he wanted some careful looking after in these his unsettled days.  “I really do think that he’ll be as fond of his own fireside as any other man, when he has once settled down,” said Mrs. Burton.

It will not, I hope, be taken as a blot on the character of this mother that she was much elated at the prospect of the good things which were to fall to her daughter’s lot.  For herself she desired nothing.  For her daughters she had coveted only good, substantial, painstaking husbands, who would fear God and mind their business.  When Harry Clavering had come across her path and had demanded a daughter from her,