you. Here is mamma, and now I must leave you. But I shall tell mamma everything before I go to bed." Then Mrs. Mountjoy came up and took Florence away, with a few words of most disdainful greeting to Harry Annesley.
When Florence was gone Harry felt that as the sun and the moon and the stars had all set, and as absolute darkness reigned through the rooms, he might as well escape into the street, where there was no one but the police to watch him, as he threw his hat up into the air in his exultation. But before he did so he had to pass by Mrs. Armitage and thank her for all her kindness; for he was aware how much she had done for him in his present circumstances. "Oh, Mrs. Armitage, I am so obliged to you! no fellow was ever so obliged to a friend before."
"How has it gone off? For Mrs. Mountjoy has taken Florence home."
"Oh yes, she has taken her away. But she hasn't shut the stable-door till the steed has been stolen."
"Oh, the steed has been stolen?"
"Yes, I think so; I do think so."
"And that poor man who has disappeared is nowhere."
"Men who disappear never are anywhere. But I do flatter myself that if he had held his ground and kept his property the result would have been the same."
"I dare say."
"Don't suppose, Mrs. Armitage, that I am taking any pride to myself. Why on earth Florence should have taken a fancy to such a fellow as I am I cannot imagine."
"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 assent, 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 assured 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 circumstances. 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 circumstances 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