“What, then?  Perhaps it is that you don’t like a fellow.  What girls generally do like is devotion, and, by George, you’d have that.  The very ground that you tread upon is sweet to me.  For beauty,—­I don’t know how it is, but to my taste there is no one I ever saw at all like you.  You fit me—­well, as though you were made for me.  I know that another fellow might say it a deal better, but no one more truly.  Miss Mountjoy, I love you with all my heart, and I want you to be my wife.  Now you’ve got it!”

He had not pleaded his cause badly, and so Florence felt.  That he had pleaded it hopelessly was a matter of course.  But he had given rise to feelings of gentle regard rather than of anger.  He had been honest, and had contrived to make her believe him.  He did not come up to her ideal of what a lover should be, but he was nearer to it than Mountjoy Scarborough.  He had touched her so closely that she determined at once to tell him the truth, thinking that she might best in this way put an end to his passion forever.  “Mr. Anderson,” she said, “though I have known it to be vain, I have thought it best to listen to you, because you asked it.”

“I am sure I am awfully obliged to you.”

“And I ought to thank you for the kind feeling you have expressed to me.  Indeed, I do thank you.  I believe every word you have said.  It is better to show my confidence in your truth than to pretend to the humility of thinking you untrue.”

“It is true; it is true,—­every word of it.”

“But I am engaged.”  Then it was sad to see the thorough change which came over the young man’s face.  “Of course a girl does not talk of her own little affairs to strangers, or I would let you have known this before, so as to have prevented it.  But, in truth, I am engaged.”

“Does Sir Magnus know it, or Lady Mountjoy?”

“I should think not.”

“Does your mother?”

“Now you are taking advantage of my confidence, and pressing your questions too closely.  But my mother does know of it.  I will tell you more;—­she does not approve of it.  But it is fixed in Heaven itself.  It may well be that I shall never be able to marry the gentleman to whom I allude, but most certainly I shall marry no one else.  I have told you this because it seems to be necessary to your welfare, so that you may get over this passing feeling.”

“It is no passing feeling,” said Anderson, with some tragic grandeur.

“At any rate, you have now my story, and remember that it is trusted to you as a gentleman.  I have told it you for a purpose.”  Then she walked out of the room, leaving the poor young man in temporary despair.

CHAPTER XVI.

Mr. And miss grey.

It was now the middle of October, and it may be said that from the time in which old Mr. Scarborough had declared his intention of showing that the elder of his sons had no right to the property, Mr. Grey, the lawyer, had been so occupied with the Scarborough affairs as to have had left him hardly a moment for other considerations.