lifted high in the world, that he was now absolutely prostrate.  He quarrelled with his lawyer, and he quarrelled also with Septimus Jones.  There was no one with whom he could discuss the matter, or rather no one who would discuss it with him on his terms.  So at last he accepted the money, and went daily into the City in order that he might turn it into more.  What became of him in the City it is hardly the province of this chronicle to tell.

CHAPTER LXIV.

THE LAST OF FLORENCE MOUNTJOY.

Now at last in this chapter has to be told the fate of Florence Mountjoy, as far as it can be told in these pages.  It was, at any rate, her peculiarity to attach to herself, by bonds which could not easily be severed, those who had once thought that they might be able to win her love.  An attempt has been made to show how firm and determined were the affections of Harry Annesley, and how absolutely he trusted in her word when once it had been given to him.  He had seemed to think that when she had even nodded to him, in answer to his assertion that he desired her to be his wife, all his trouble as regarded her heart had been off his mind.

There might be infinite trouble as to time,—­as to ten years, three years, or even one year; trouble in inducing her to promise that she would become his wife in opposition to her mother; but he had felt sure that she never would be the wife of any one else.  How he had at last succeeded in mitigating the opposition of her mother, so as to make the three years, or even the one year, appear to himself an altogether impossible delay, the reader knows.  How he at last contrived to have his own way altogether, so that, as Florence told him, she was merely a ball in his hand, the reader will have to know very shortly.  But not a shade of doubt had ever clouded Harry’s mind as to his eventual success since she had nodded to him at Mrs. Armitage’s ball.  Though this girl’s love had been so grand a thing to have achieved, he was quite sure from that moment that it would be his forever.

With Mountjoy Scarborough there had never come such a moment, and never could; yet he had been very confident, so that he had lived on the assurance that such a moment would come.  And the self-deportment natural to her had been such that he had shown his assurance.  He never would have succeeded; but he should not the less love her sincerely.  And when the time came for him to think what he should do with himself, those few days after his father’s death, he turned to her as his one prospect of salvation.  If his cousin Florence would be good to him all might yet be well.  He had come by that time to lose his assurance.  He had recognized Harry Annesley as his enemy, as has been told often enough in these pages.  Harry was to him a hateful stumbling-block.  And he had not been quite as sure of her fidelity to another as Harry had been sure of it to himself.  Tretton might prevail.  Trettons do so often prevail.  And the girl’s mother was all on his side.  So he had gone to Cheltenham, true as the needle to the pole, to try his luck yet once again.  He had gone to Cheltenham, and there he found Harry Annesley.  All hopes for him were then over and he started at once for Monaco; or, as he himself told himself, for the devil.