“He’s sure to be a baronet some of these days, you know,” said Sir Magnus.

“I don’t think that would go very far with Florence,” said her mother.

“But it ought.  Look about in the world and you’ll see that it does go a long way.  He’d be the fifth baronet.”

“But his elder brother is alive.”

“The queerest fellow you ever saw in your born days, and his life is not worth a year’s purchase.  He’s got some infernal disease,—­nostalgia, or what ’d’ye call it?—­which never leaves him a moment’s peace, and then he drinks nothing but milk.  Sure to go off;—­cock sure.”

“I shouldn’t like Florence to count upon that.”

“And then Hugh Anderson, the fellow here, is very well off as it is.  He has four hundred pounds here, and another five hundred pounds of his own.  Florence has, or will have, four hundred pounds of her own.  I should call them deuced rich.  I should, indeed, as beginners.  She could have her pair of ponies here, and what more would she want?”

These arguments did go very far with Mrs. Mountjoy, the farther because in her estimation Sir Magnus was a great man.  He was the greatest Englishman, at any rate, in Brussels, and where should she go for advice but to an Englishman?  And she did not know that Sir Magnus had succeeded in borrowing a considerable sum of money from his second secretary of legation.

“Leave her to me for a little;—­just leave her to me,” said Lady Mountjoy.

“I would not say anything hard to her,” said the mother, pleading for her naughty child.

“Not too hard, but she must be made to understand.  You see there have been misfortunes.  As to Mountjoy Scarborough, he’s past hoping for.”

“You think so?”

“Altogether.  When a man has disappeared there’s an end of him.  There was Lord Baltiboy’s younger son disappeared, and he turned out to be a Zouave corporal in a French regiment.  They did get him out, of course, but then he went preaching in America.  You may take it for granted, that when a man has absolutely vanished from the clubs, he’ll never be any good again as a marrying man.”

“But there’s his brother, who, they say, is to have the property.”

“A very cold-blooded sort of young man, who doesn’t care a straw for his own family.”  He had received very sternly the overtures for a loan from Sir Magnus.  “And he, as I understand, has never declared himself in Florence’s favor.  You can’t count upon Augustus Scarborough.”

“Not just count upon him.”

“Whereas there’s young Anderson, who is the most gentleman-like young man I know, all ready.  It will have been such a turn of luck your coming here and catching him up.”

“I don’t know that it can be called a turn of luck.  Florence has a very nice fortune of her own—­”

“And she wants to give it to this penniless reprobate.  It is just one of those cases in which you must deal roundly with a girl.  She has to be frightened, and that’s about the truth of it.”