had been the meaning of Augustus Scarborough when he informed his aunt that Harry had been the last who had seen Mountjoy before his disappearance.  To Mrs. Mountjoy the fact had been most injurious to Harry’s character.  Harry had wilfully kept the secret while all the world was at work looking for Mountjoy Scarborough; and, as far as Mrs. Mountjoy could understand, it might well be that Harry had struck the fatal blow that had sent her nephew to his long account.  All the impossibilities in the case had not dawned upon her.  It had not occurred to her that Mountjoy could not have been killed and his body made away with without some great effort, in the performance of which the “scamp” would hardly have risked his life or his character.  But the scamp was certainly a scamp, even though he might not be a murderer, or he would have revealed the secret.  In fact, Mrs. Mountjoy believed in the matter exactly what Augustus had intended, and, so believing, had resolved that her daughter should suffer any purgatory rather than become Harry’s wife.

But her daughter made her resolutions exactly in the contrary direction.  She in truth did know what had been done on that night, while her mother was in ignorance.  The extent of her mother’s ignorance she understood, but she did not at all know where her mother had got her information.  She felt that Harry’s secret was in hands other than he had intended, and that some one must have spoken of the scene.  It occurred to Florence at the moment that this must have come from Mountjoy himself, whom she believed,—­and rightly believed,—­to have been the only second person present on the occasion.  And if he had told it to any one, then must that “any one” know where and how he had disappeared.  And the information must have been given to her mother solely with the view of damaging Harry’s character, and of preventing Harry’s marriage.

Thinking of all this, Florence felt that a premeditated and foul attempt,—­for, as she turned it in her mind, the attempt seemed to be very foul,—­was being made to injure Harry.  A false accusation was brought against him, and was grounded on a misrepresentation of the truth in such a manner as to subvert it altogether to Harry’s injury.  It should have no effect upon her.  To this determination she came at once, and declared to herself solemnly that she would be true to it.  An attempt was made to undermine him in her estimation; but they who made it had not known her character.  She was sure of herself now, within her own bosom, that she was bound in a peculiar way to be more than ordinarily true to Harry Annesley.  In such an emergency she ought to do for Harry Annesley more than a girl in common circumstances would be justified in doing for her lover.  Harry was maligned, ill-used, and slandered.  Her mother had been induced to call him a scamp, and to give as her reason for doing so an account of a transaction which was altogether false, though she no doubt had believed it to be true.