“I shall not at all want the habit,” said Florence, “not having the horse, and indeed, never being accustomed to ride at all.”

“Do tell me what it is that you do do,” said Mr. Anderson, with a convenient whisper, when he found that M. Grascour had fallen into conversation with her ladyship.  “Lawn-tennis?”

“I do play at lawn-tennis, though I am not wedded to it.”

“Billiards?  I know you play billiards.”

“I never struck a ball in my life.”

“Goodness gracious, how odd!  Don’t you ever amuse yourself at all?  Are they so very devotional down at Cheltenham?”

“I suppose we are stupid.  I don’t know that I ever do especially amuse myself.”

“We must teach you;—­we really must teach you.  I think I may boast of myself that I am a good instructor in that line.  Will you promise to put yourself into my hands?”

“You will find me a most unpromising pupil.”

“Not in the least.  I will undertake that when you leave this you shall be au fait at everything.  Leap frog is not too heavy for me and spillikins not too light.  I am up to them all, from backgammon to a cotillon,—­not but what I prefer the cotillon for my own taste.”

“Or leap-frog, perhaps,” suggested Florence.

“Well, yes; leap-frog used to be a good game at Gother School, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t have it back again.  Ladies, of course, must have a costume on purpose.  But I am fond of anything that requires a costume.  Don’t you like everything out of the common way?  I do.”  Florence assured him that their tastes were wholly dissimilar, as she liked everything in the common way.  “That’s what I call an uncommonly pretty girl,” he said afterward to M. Grascour, while Sir Magnus was talking to Sir Thomas.  “What an eye!”

“Yes, indeed; she is very lovely.”

“My word, you may say that!  And such a turn of the shoulders!  I don’t say which are the best-looking, as a rule, English or Belgians, but there are very few of either to come up to her.”

“Anderson, can you tell us how many tons of steel rails they turn out at Liege every week?  Sir Thomas asks me, just as though it were the simplest question in the world.”

“Forty million,” said Anderson,—­“more or less.”

“Twenty thousand would, perhaps, be nearer the mark,” said M. Grascour; “but I will send him the exact amount to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XV.

Mr. Anderson’s love.

Lady Mountjoy had certainly prophesied the truth when she said that Mr. Anderson would devote himself to Florence.  The first week in Brussels passed by quietly enough.  A young man can hardly declare his passion within a week, and Mr. Anderson’s ways in that particular were well known.  A certain amount of license was usually given to him, both by Sir Magnus and Lady Mountjoy, and when he would become remarkable by the rapidity of his changes the only adverse criticism would come generally from Mr. Blow.  “Another peerless Bird of Paradise,” Mr. Blow would say.  “If the birds were less numerous, Anderson might, perhaps, do something.”  But at the end of the week, on this occasion, even Sir Magnus perceived that Anderson was about to make himself peculiar.