"Oh no; not in the least."

"It's all very well for you to laugh, Mrs. Armitage, but as I have thought of it all I have sometimes been in despair."

"But now you are not in despair."

"No, indeed; just now I am triumphant. I have thought so often that I was a fool to love her, because everything was so much against me."

"I have wondered that you continued. It always seemed to me that there wasn't a ghost of a chance for you. Mr. Armitage bade me give it all up, because he was sure you would never do any good."

"I don't care how much you laugh at me, Mrs. Armitage."

"Let those laugh who win." Then he rushed out into the Paragon, and absolutely did throw his hat up in the air in his triumph.

CHAPTER XIII.

MRS. MOUNTJOY'S ANGER.

Florence, as she went home in the fly with her mother after the party at which Harry had spoken to her so openly, did not find the little journey very happy. Mrs. Mountjoy was a woman endowed with a strong power of wishing rather than of willing, of desiring rather than of contriving; but she was one who could make herself very unpleasant when she was thwarted. Her daughter was now at last fully determined that if she ever married anybody, that person should be Harry Annesley. Having once pressed his arm in token of a.s.sent, she had as it were given herself away to him, so that no reasoning, no expostulations could, she thought, change her purpose; and she had much more power of bringing about her purposed design than had her mother. But her mother could be obstinate and self-willed, and would for the time make herself disagreeable.

Florence had a.s.sured her lover that everything should be told her mother that night before she went to bed. But Mrs. Mountjoy did not wait to be simply told. No sooner were they seated in the fly together than she began to make her inquiries. "What has that man been saying to you?" she demanded.

Florence was at once offended by hearing her lover so spoken of, and could not simply tell the story of Harry's successful courtship, as she had intended. "Mamma," she said "why do you speak of him like that?"

"Because he is a scamp."

"No, he is no scamp. It is very unkind of you to speak in such terms of one whom you know is very dear to me."

"I do not know it. He ought not to be dear to you at all. You have been for years intended for another purpose." This was intolerable to Florence,--this idea that she should have been considered as capable of being intended for the purposes of other people! And a resolution at once was formed in her mind that she would let her mother know that such intentions were futile. But for the moment she sat silent. A journey home at twelve o'clock at night in a fly was not the time for the expression of her resolution. "I say he is a scamp," said Mrs. Mountjoy.

"During all these inquiries that have been made after your cousin he has known all about it."

"He has not known all about it," said Florence.

"You contradict me in a very impertinent manner, and cannot be acquainted with the circ.u.mstances. The last person who saw your cousin in London was Mr. Henry Annesley, and yet he has not said a word about it, while search was being made on all sides. And he saw him under circ.u.mstances most suspicious in their nature; so suspicious as to have made the police arrest him if they were aware of them. He had at that moment grossly insulted Captain Scarborough."

"No, mamma; no, it was not so."

"How do you know? how can you tell?"

"I do know; and I can tell. The ill-usage had come from the other side."

"Then you, too, have known the secret, and have said nothing about it?

You, too, have been aware of the violence which took place at that midnight meeting? You have been aware of what befell your cousin, the man to whom you were all but engaged. And you have held your tongue at the instigation, no doubt, of Mr. Henry Annesley. Oh, Florence, you also will find yourself in the hands of the policeman!" At this moment the fly drew up at the door of the house in Montpelier Place, and the two ladies had to get out and walk up the steps into the hall, where they were congratulated on their early return from the party by the lady's-maid.

"Mamma, I will go to bed," said Florence, as soon as she reached her mother's room.

"I think you had better, my dear, though Heaven knows what disturbances there may be during the night." By this Mrs. Mountjoy had intended to imply that Prodgers, the policeman, might probably lose not a moment more before he would at once proceed to arrest Miss Mountjoy for the steps she had taken in regard to the disappearance of Captain Scarborough.

She had heard from Harry Annesley the fact that he had been brutally attacked by the captain in the middle of the night in the streets of London; and for this, in accordance with her mother's theory, she was to be dragged out of bed by a constable, and that, probably, before the next morning should have come. There was something in this so ludicrous as regarded the truth of the story, and yet so cruel as coming from her mother, that Florence hardly knew whether to cry or laugh as she laid her head upon the pillow.

But in the morning, as she was thinking that the facts of her own position had still to be explained to her mother,--that it would be necessary that she should declare her purpose and the impossibility of change, now that she had once pledged herself to her lover,--Mrs.

Mountjoy came into the room, and stood at her bedside, with that appearance of ghostly displeasure which always belongs to an angry old lady in a night-cap.

"Well, mamma?"

"Florence, there must be an understanding between us."

"I hope so. I thought there always had been. I am sure, mamma, you have known that I have never liked Captain Scarborough so as to become his wife, and I think you have known that I have liked Harry Annesley."

"Likings are all fiddlesticks!"

"No, mamma; or, if you object to the word, I will say love. You have known that I have not loved my cousin, and that I have loved this other man. That is not nonsense; that at any rate is a stern reality, if there be anything real in the world."

"Stern! you may well call it stern."

"I mean unbending, strong, not to be overcome by outside circ.u.mstances.

If Mr. Annesley had not spoken to me as he did last night,--could never have so spoken to me,--I should have been a miserable girl, but my love for him would have been just as stern. I should have remained and thought of it, and have been unhappy through my whole life. But he has spoken, and I am exultant. That is what I mean by stern. All that is most important, at any rate to me."

"I am here now to tell you that it is impossible."

"Very well, mamma. Then things must go on, and we must bide our time."

"It is proper that I should tell you that he has disgraced himself."

"Never! I will not admit it. You do not know the circ.u.mstances,"

exclaimed Florence.

"It is most impertinent in you to pretend that you know them better than I do," said her mother, indignantly.

"The story was told to me by himself."

"Yes; and therefore told untruly."

"I grieve that you should think so of him, mamma; but I cannot help it.

Where you have got your information I cannot tell. But that mine has been accurately told to me I feel certain."

"At any rate, my duty is to look after you and to keep you from harm. I can only do my duty to the best of my ability. Mr. Annesley is, to my thinking, a most objectionable young man, and he will, I believe, be in the hands of the police before long. Evidence will have to be given, in which your name will, unfortunately, be mentioned."

"Why my name?"

"It is not probable that he will keep it a secret, when cross-questioned, as to his having divulged the story to some one. He will declare that he has told it to you. When that time shall come it will be well that we should be out of the country. I propose to start from here on this day week."

"Uncle Magnus will not be able to have us then."

"We must loiter away our time on the road. I look upon it as quite imperative that we shall both be out of England within eight days' time of this."

"But where will you go?"