“Is that honest, father?”

“It’s honest on my part, knowing the people with whom I have to deal.  If I were to lay down the strict minimum which he should grant, he would add other things which would cause him to act not in accordance with my advice.  I have to make allowance for his folly,—­a sort of windage, which is not dishonest.  Had he referred her lawyers to me I could have been as hard and honest as you please.”  All which did not quite satisfy Dolly’s strict ideas of integrity.

But the terms proposed were that the lady’s means should be divided so that one-half should go to herself for her own personal expenses, and the other half to her husband for the use of the house; that the lady should put up with a jointure of two hundred and fifty pounds, which ought to suffice when joined to her own property, and that the settlement among the children should be as recommended by Messrs. Soames & Simpson.

“And if there are not any children, papa?”

“Then each will receive his or her own property.”

“Because it may be so.”

“Certainly, my dear; very probably.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Mr. Harkaway.

When the first Monday in November came Harry was still living at the rectory.  Indeed, what other home had he in which to live?  Other friends had become shy of him besides his uncle.  He had been accustomed to receive many invitations.  Young men who are the heirs to properties, and are supposed to be rich because they are idle, do get themselves asked about here and there, and think a great deal of themselves in consequence.  “There’s young Jones.  He is fairly good-looking, but hasn’t a word to say for himself.  He will do to pair off with Miss Smith, who’ll talk for a dozen.  He can’t hit a hay-stack, but he’s none the worse for that.  We haven’t got too many pheasants.  He’ll be sure to come when you ask him,—­and he’ll be sure to go.”

So Jones is asked, and considers himself to be the most popular man in London.  I will not say that Harry’s invitations had been of exactly that description; but he too had considered himself to be popular, and now greatly felt the withdrawal of such marks of friendship.  He had received one “put off”—­from the Ingoldsbys of Kent.  Early in June he had promised to be there in November.  The youngest Miss Ingoldsby was very pretty, and he, no doubt, had been gracious.  She knew that he had meant nothing,—­could have meant nothing.  But he might come to mean something, and had been most pressingly asked.  In September there came a letter to him to say that the room intended for him at Ingoldsby had been burnt down.  Mrs. Ingoldsby was so extremely sorry, and so were the “girls!” Harry could trace it all up.  The Ingoldsbys knew the Greens, and Mrs. Green was Sister to Septimus Jones, who was absolutely the slave,—­the slave, as Harry said, repeating the word to himself with emphasis,—­of Augustus Scarborough.  He was very unhappy, not that he cared in the least for any Miss Ingoldsby, but that he began to be conscious that he was to be dropped.