coming.  Her mother had yielded so much, and Mountjoy had yielded.  Harry was saying to himself at this very moment that Mountjoy had thrown up the sponge.  She, too, was declaring the same thing for her own comfort in less sporting phraseology, and, what was much more to her, her mother had nearly thrown up the sponge also.  In the worse days of her troubles any suitor had made himself welcome to her mother who would rescue her child from the fangs of that roaring lion, Harry Annesley.  Mr. Anderson had been received with open arms, and even M. Grascour.  Mrs. Mountjoy had then got it into her head that of all lions which were about in those days Harry roared the loudest.  His sins in regard to leaving poor Mountjoy speechless and motionless on the pavement had filled her with horror.  But Florence now felt that all that had come to an end.  Not only had Mountjoy gone away, but no mention would probably be ever again made of Anderson or Grascour.  When Florence was preparing herself for tea that evening she sung a little song to herself as to the coming of the conquering hero.  “A man must take his chance in such warfare as this,” she said, repeating to herself her lover’s words.

“You can’t expect me to be very bright,” her mother said to her before Harry came.

There was a sign of yielding in this also; but Florence in her happiness did not wish to make her mother miserable, “Why not be bright, mamma?  Don’t you know that Harry is good?”

“No.  How am I to know anything about him?  He may be utterly penniless.”

“But his uncle has offered to let us live in the house and to give us an income.  Mr. Prosper has abandoned all idea of getting married.”

“He can be married any day.  And why do you want to live in another man’s house when you may live in your own?  Tretton is ready for you,—­the finest mansion in the whole county.”  Here Mrs. Mountjoy exaggerated a little, but some exaggeration may be allowed to a lady in her circumstances.

“Mamma, you know that I cannot live at Tretton.”

“It is the house in which I was born.”

“How can that signify?  When such things happen they are used as additional grounds for satisfaction.  But I cannot marry your nephew because you were born in a certain house.  And all that is over now:  you know that Mountjoy will not come back again.”

“He would,” exclaimed the mother, as though with new hopes.

“Oh, mamma! how can you talk like that?  I mean to marry Harry Annesley;—­you know that I do.  Why not make your own girl happy by accepting him?” Then Mrs. Mountjoy left the room and went to her own chamber and cried there, not bitterly, I think, but copiously.  Her girl would be the wife of the squire of Buston, who, after all, was not a bad sort of fellow.  At any rate he would not gamble.  There had always been that terrible drawback.  And he was a fellow of his college, in which she would look for, and probably would find, some compensation as to Tretton.  When, therefore, she came down to tea, she was able to receive Harry not with joy but at least without rebuke.