Mrs. Mountjoy showed by her countenance that she was extremely shocked. "Oh, Harry!" said Florence, "none of us, I hope, will be dead in three years."
"I shall be a great deal too old to be married if I am left alive. Three months, you mean. It will be just the proper time of year, which does go for something. And three months is always supposed to be long enough to allow a girl to get her new frocks."
"You know nothing about it, Harry," said Florence. And so the matter was discussed—in such a manner that when Harry took his departure that evening he was half inclined to sing a song of himself about the conquering hero. "Dear mamma!" said Florence, kissing her mother with all the warm, clinging affection of former years. It was very pleasant,—but still Mrs. Mountjoy went to her room with a sad heart.
When there she sat for a while over the fire, and then drew out her desk. She had been beaten,—absolutely beaten,—and it was necessary that she should own so much in writing to one person. So she wrote her letter, which was as follows:
"Dear Mountjoy,—After all it cannot be as I would have had it. As they say, 'Man proposes, but God disposes.' I would have given her to you now, and would even yet have trusted that you would have treated her well, had it not been that Mr. Annesley has gained such a hold upon her affections. She is wilful, as you are, and I cannot bend her. It has been the longing of my heart that you two should live together at Tretton. But such longings are, I think, wicked, and are seldom realized.
"I write now just this one line to tell you that it is all settled. I have not been strong enough to prevent such settling. He talks of three months! But what does it matter? Three months or three years will be the same to you, and nearly the same to me.
"Your affectionate aunt,
"SARAH MOUNTJOY.
"P.S.—May I as your loving aunt add one word of passionate entreaty? All Tretton is yours now, and the honor of Tretton is within your keeping. Do not go back to those wretched tables!"
Mountjoy Scarborough when he received this letter cannot be said to have been made unhappy by it, because he had already known all his unhappiness. But he turned it in his mind as though to think what would now be the best course of life open to him. And he did think that he had better go back to those tables against which his aunt had warned him, and there remain till he had made the acres of Tretton utterly disappear. There was nothing for him which seemed to be better. And here at home in England even that would at present be impossible to him. He could not enter the clubs, and elsewhere Samuel Hart would be ever at his heels. And there was his brother with his lawsuit, though on that matter a compromise had already been offered to him. Augustus had proposed to him by his lawyer to share Tretton. He would never share Tretton. His brother should have an income secured to him, but he would keep Tretton in his own hands,—as long as the gambling-tables would allow him.