language, and she came at this time to the conclusion that if Mr. Anderson continued his pursuit of her she would tell him the exact truth of the case.  As a gentleman, and as a young man, she thought that he would sympathize with her.  The one enemy whom she did dread was Lady Mountjoy.  She too had felt that her aunt could “take her skin off her,” as Sir Magnus had said.  She had not heard the words, but she knew that it was so, and her dislike to Lady Mountjoy was in proportion.  It cannot be said that she was afraid.  She did not intend to leave her skin in her aunt’s hands.  For every inch of skin taken she resolved to have an inch in return.  She was not acquainted with the expressive mode of language which Sir Magnus had adopted, but she was prepared for all such attacks.  For Sir Magnus himself, since he had given up the letter to her, she did feel some regard.

Behind the British minister’s house, which, though entitled to no such name, was generally called the Embassy, there was a large garden, which, though not much used by Sir Magnus or Lady Mountjoy, was regarded as a valuable adjunct to the establishment.  Here Florence betook herself for exercise, and here Mr. Anderson, having put off the muddy marks of his riding, found her one afternoon.  It must be understood that no young man was ever more in earnest than Mr. Anderson.  He, too, looking through the glass which had been prepared for him by Sir Magnus, thought that he saw in the not very far distant future a Mrs. Hugh Anderson driving a pair of gray ponies along the boulevard and he was much pleased with the sight.  It reached to the top of his ambition.  Florence was to his eyes really the sort of a girl whom a man in his position ought to marry.  A secretary of legation in a small foreign capital cannot do with a dowdy wife, as may a clerk, for instance, in the Foreign Office.  A secretary of legation,—­the second secretary, he told himself,—­was bound, if he married at all, to have a pretty and distinguee wife.  He knew all about the intricacies which had fallen in a peculiar way into his own hand.  Mr. Blow might have married a South Sea Islander, and would have been none the worse as regarded his official duties.  Mr. Blow did not want the services of a wife in discovering and reporting all the secrets of the Belgium iron trade.  There was no intricacy in that, no nicety.  There was much of what, in his lighter moments, Mr. Anderson called “sweat.”  He did not pretend to much capacity for such duties; but in his own peculiar walk he thought that he was great.  But it was very fatiguing, and he was sure that a wife was necessary to him.  There were little niceties which none but a wife could perform.  He had a great esteem for Sir Magnus.  Sir Magnus was well thought of by all the court, and by the foreign minister at Brussels.  But Lady Mountjoy was really of no use.  The beginning and the end of it all with her was to show herself in a carriage.  It was incumbent upon him, Anderson, to marry.