To her thinking the letter was full of love, and of love expressed in the warmest possible language.  “Sir William Crook!” she said to herself.  “What can he want of Harry in America for three years?  I am sure he is a stupid man.  Will I wait?  Of course I will wait.  What are three years?  And why should I not wait?  But, for the matter of that—­” Then thoughts came into her mind which even to herself she could not express in words.  Sir William Crook had got a wife, and why should not Harry take a wife also?  She did not see why a private secretary should not be a married man; and as for money, there would be plenty for such a style of life as they would live.  She could not exactly propose this, but she thought that if she were to see Harry just for one short interview before he started, that he might probably then propose it himself.

“Things be as they used to be!” she exclaimed to herself.  “Never!  Things cannot be as they used to be.  I know what is his duty.  It is his duty not to think of anything of the kind.  Remember that he exists,” she said, turning back to the earlier words of the letter.  “That of course is his joke.  I wonder whether he knows that every moment of my life is devoted to him.  Of course I bade him not to write.  But I can tell him now that I have never gone to bed without his letter beneath my pillow.”  This and much more of the same kind was uttered in soliloquies, but need not be repeated at length to the reader.

But she had to think what steps she must first take.  She must tell her mother of Harry’s intention.  She had never for an instant allowed her mother to think that her affection had dwindled, or her purpose failed her.  She was engaged to marry Harry Annesley, and marry him some day she would.  That her mother should be sure of that was the immediate purpose of her life.  And in carrying out that purpose she must acquaint her mother with the news which this letter had brought to her.  “Mamma, I have got something to tell you.”

“Well, my dear?”

“Harry Annesley is going to America!” There was something pleasing to Mrs. Mountjoy in the sound of these words.  If Harry Annesley went to America he might be drowned, or it might more probably be that he would never come back.  America was, to her imagination, a long way off.  Lovers did not go to America except with the intention of deserting their ladyloves.  Such were her ideas.  She felt at the moment that Florence would be more easily approached in reference either to her cousin Mountjoy or to Mr. Anderson.  Another lover had sprung up, too, in Brussels, of whom a word shall be said by-and-by.  If her Harry, the pernicious Harry, should have taken himself to America, the chances of all these three gentlemen would be improved.  Any one of them would now be accepted by Mrs. Mountjoy as a bar fatal to Harry Annesley.  Mountjoy was again the favorite with her.  She had heard that he had returned to Tretton, and was living amicably with his father.