Among the lovers of Florence some memory may attach itself to poor Hugh Anderson.  He too had been absolutely true to Florence.  From the hour in which he had first conceived the idea that she would make him happy as his wife, it had gone on growing upon him with all the weight of love, He did not quite understand why he should have loved her so dearly, but thus it was.  Such a Mrs. Hugh Anderson, with a pair of horses on the boulevards, was to his imagination the most lovely sight which could be painted.  Then Florence took the mode of disabusing him which has been told, and Hugh Anderson gave the required promise.  Alas, in what an unfortunate moment had he done so!  Such was his own thought.  For though he was sure of his own attachment to her, he could not mount high enough to be as sure of her to somebody else.  It was a “sort of thing a man oughtn’t to have been asked to promise,” he said to the third secretary.  And having so determined, he made up his mind to follow her to England and to try his fortune once again.

Florence had just wished Harry good-bye for the day, or rather for the week.  She cared for nothing now in the way of protestations of affection.  “Come Harry—­there now—­don’t be so unreasonable.  Am not I just as impatient as you are?  This day fortnight you will be back, and then—­”

“Then there will be some peace, won’t there?  But mind you write every day.”  And so Harry was whisked away, as triumphant a man as ever left Cheltenham by the London train.  On the following morning Hugh Anderson reached Cheltenham and appeared in Montpellier Place.

“My daughter is at home, certainly,” said Mrs. Mountjoy.  There was something in the tone which made the young man at once assure himself that he had better go back to Brussels.  He had even been a favorite with Mrs. Mountjoy.  In his days of love-making poor Mountjoy had been absent, declared no longer to have a chance of Tretton, and Harry had been—­the very evil one himself.  Mrs. Mountjoy had been assured by the Brussels Mountjoy that, with the view of getting well rid of the evil one, she had better take poor Anderson to her bosom.  She had opened her bosom accordingly, but with very poor results.  And now he had come to look after what result there might be.  Mrs. Mountjoy felt that he had better go back to Brussels.

“Could I not see her?” asked Anderson.

“Well, yes; you could see her.”

“Mrs. Mountjoy, I’ll tell you everything, just as though you were my own mother.  I have loved your daughter;—­oh, I don’t know how it is!  If she’d be my wife for two years, I don’t think I’d mind dying afterward.”

“Oh, Mr. Anderson!”

“I wouldn’t.  I never heard of a case where a girl had got such a hold of a man as she has of me.”

“You don’t mean to say that she has behaved badly?”