Life went on rather sadly with Florence.  Anderson was as good as his word.  He pleaded his own cause no farther, telling both Sir Magnus and Lady Mountjoy of the pledge he had made.  He did in fact tell two or three other persons, regarding himself as a martyr to chivalry.  All this time he went about his business looking very wretched.  But though he did not speak for himself, he could not hinder others from speaking for him.  Sir Magnus took occasion to say a word on the subject once daily to his niece.  Her mother was constant in her attacks.  But Lady Mountjoy was the severest of the three, and was accounted by Florence as her bitterest enemy.  The words which passed between them were not the most affectionate in the world.  Lady Mountjoy would call her ‘miss,’ to which Florence would reply by addressing her aunt as ‘my lady.’  “Why do you call me ‘my lady?’ It isn’t usual in common conversation.”  “Why do you call me ‘miss?’ If you cease to call me ‘miss,’ I’ll cease to call you ‘my lady.’” But no reverence was paid by the girl to the wife of the British Minister.  It was this that Lady Mountjoy specially felt,—­as she complained to her companion, Miss Abbott.  Then another cause for trouble sprang up during the winter, of which mention must be made farther on.  The result was that Florence was instant with her mother to take her back to England.

We will return, however, to Harry Annesley, and give the letter, verbatim, which he wrote to Florence: 

“DEAR FLORENCE,—­I wonder whether you ever think of me or ever remember that I exist?  I know you do.  I cannot have been forgotten like that.  And you yourself are the truest girl that ever owned to loving a man.  But there comes a chill across my heart when I think how long it is since I wrote to you, and that I have not had a line even to acknowledge my letter.  You bade me not to write, and you have not even forgiven me for disobeying your order.  I cannot but get stupid ideas into my mind, which one word from you would dissipate.

“Now, however, I must write again, order or no order.  Between a man and a woman circumstanced as you and I, things will arise which make it incumbent on one or the other to write.  It is absolutely necessary that you should now know what are my intentions, and understand the reasons which have actuated me.  I have found myself left in a most unfortunate condition by my uncle’s folly.  He is going on with a stupid marriage for the purpose of disinheriting me, and has in the mean time stopped the allowance which he had made me since I left college.  Of course I have no absolute claim on him.  But I cannot understand how he can reconcile himself to do so, when he himself prevented my going to the Bar, saying that it would be unnecessary.