"But his uncle has offered to let us live in the house and to give us an income. Mr. Prosper has abandoned all idea of getting married."
"He can be married any day. And why do you want to live in another man's house when you may live in your own? Tretton is ready for you,—the finest mansion in the whole county." Here Mrs. Mountjoy exaggerated a little, but some exaggeration may be allowed to a lady in her circumstances.
"Mamma, you know that I cannot live at Tretton."
"It is the house in which I was born."
"How can that signify? When such things happen they are used as additional grounds for satisfaction. But I cannot marry your nephew because you were born in a certain house. And all that is over now: you know that Mountjoy will not come back again."
"He would," exclaimed the mother, as though with new hopes.
"Oh, mamma! how can you talk like that? I mean to marry Harry Annesley;—you know that I do. Why not make your own girl happy by accepting him?" Then Mrs. Mountjoy left the room and went to her own chamber and cried there, not bitterly, I think, but copiously. Her girl would be the wife of the squire of Buston, who, after all, was not a bad sort of fellow. At any rate he would not gamble. There had always been that terrible drawback. And he was a fellow of his college, in which she would look for, and probably would find, some compensation as to Tretton. When, therefore, she came down to tea, she was able to receive Harry not with joy but at least without rebuke.
Conversation was at first somewhat flat between the two. If the old lady could have been induced to remain up-stairs, Harry felt that the evening would have been much more satisfactory. But, as it was, he found himself enabled to make some progress. He at once began to address Florence as his undoubted future spouse, very slyly using words adapted for that purpose: and she, without any outburst of her intention,—as she had made when discussing the matter with her cousin,—answered him in the same spirit, and by degrees came so to talk as though the matter were entirely settled. And then, at last, that future day was absolutely brought on the tapis as though now to be named.
"Three years!" ejaculated Mrs. Mountjoy, as though not even yet surrendering her last hope.
Florence, from the nature of the circumstances, received this in silence. Had it been ten years she might have expostulated. But a young lady's bashfulness was bound to appear satisfied with an assurance of marriage within three years. But it was otherwise with Harry. "Good God, Mrs. Mountjoy, we shall all be dead!" he cried out.