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Updated: July 14, 2025
Prosper had felt that it would be necessary to look his best, so that his marriage might be justified in the eyes of the lawyer. Mr. Barry was shown into the book-room at Buston, in which Mr. Prosper was seated ready to receive him. The two gentlemen had never before met each other, and Mr. Prosper did no doubt assume something of the manner of an aristocratic owner of land.
Thinking of all this when he received his mother's letter, he assured himself that Florence would not like professional literature. He wrote to say that he would be down at Buston in five days' time. It does not become a son who is a fellow of a college and the heir to a property to obey his parents too quickly.
Prosper had become comparatively light in heart since the duty of providing a wife for Buston, and a future mother for Buston's heirs, had been taken off his shoulders and thrown upon those of his nephew. The more he looked back upon the days of his own courtship the more did his own deliverance appear to him to be almost a work of Heaven.
Were he to die without having begotten another heir, Buston must become the property of Harry Annesley; and it would be dreadful to him to think that Buston should be owned by an American citizen. "The salary offered is too good to be abandoned," said Mr. Annesley, when he saw the effect which his story had produced. "Everything is going against me!" exclaimed Mr. Prosper.
Harry did not tell his uncle that in that case the difficulty might probably vanish, as the same degree of fate which had robbed him of his poor uncle would have made him owner of Buston. In such a case as that Mrs. Mountjoy might probably give way. "But why is the young lady to be kept from marriage for three years? Does she wish it?"
A sad occasion it generally was to the elder of the rectory children, who were thus doomed to abandon the loud pleasantries of their own home for the sober Sunday solemnities of the Hall. It was not that the Squire of Buston was peculiarly a religious man, or that the rector was the reverse: but the parson was joyous, whereas the other was solemn.
"If I can induce you to listen to me favorably, I shall say of myself that I am the happiest gentleman in Hertfordshire." "Oh, Mr. Prosper!" "My purpose is to lay at your feet my hand, my heart, and the lands of Buston." Here he was again going backward, but it did not much matter now in what sequence the words were said. The offer had been thoroughly completed and was thoroughly understood.
But if his uncle accused him, he could not but tell his uncle that he knew nothing of the matter of which he was talking. Not for all Buston could he admit that he had done anything mean or ignoble. Florence, he was quite sure, would not desire it. Florence would not be Florence were she to desire it.
It might be well that Harry should ultimately have the property, though he should never again be taken into favor, and there should be no farther question of the allowance. As Miss Thoroughbung reiterated her demands for the ponies, he began to feel that the acres of Buston would not be disgraced forever by the telling of that lie.
Nevertheless, he did make arrangements by which Mountjoy should proceed to Buston, stopping two nights as he went to London. "There isn't a club he can enter," said the squire, comforting himself, "nor a Jew that will lend him a five-pound note." Mountjoy had told the truth when he had said that nothing was a comfort.
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