As she sat alone in her bed-room, five or six hours after this interview, she felt some regret that she should leave Clavering without a word to Fanny on the subject.  Mr. Saul had exacted no promise of secresy from her; he was not a man to exact such promises.  But she felt not the less that she would be betraying confidence to speak, and it might even be that her speaking on the matter would do more harm than good.  Her sympathies were doubtless with Mr. Saul, but she could not therefore say that she, thought Fanny ought to accept his love.  It would be best to say nothing of the matter, and to allow Mr. Saul to fight his own battle.

Then she turned to her own matters, and there she found that everything was pleasant.  How good the world had been to her to give her such a lover as Harry Clavering!  She owned with all her heart the excellence of being in love when a girl might be allowed to call such a man her own.  She could not but make comparisons between him and Mr. Saul, though she knew that she was making them on points that were hardly worthy of her thoughts.  Mr. Saul was plain, uncouth, with little that was bright about him except the brightness of his piety.  Harry was like the morning star.  He looked and walked and spoke as though he were something more godlike than common men.  His very voice created joy, and the ring of his laughter was to Florence as the music of the heavens.  What woman would not have loved Harry Clavering?  Even Julia Brabazon—­a creature so base that she had sold herself to such a thing as Lord Ongar for money and a title, but so grand in her gait and ways, so Florence had been told, that she seemed to despise the earth on which she trod—­even she had loved him.  Then as Florence thought of what Julia Brabazon might have had and of what she had lost, she wondered that there could be women born so sadly vicious.

But that woman’s vice had given her her success, her joy, her great triumph!  It was surely not for her to deal hardly with the faults of Julia Brabazon—­for her who was enjoying all the blessings of which those faults had robbed the other!  Julia Brabazon had been her very good friend.

But why had this perfect lover come to her, to one so small, so trifling, so little in the world’s account as she, and given to her all the treasure of his love?  Oh, Harry—­dear Harry! what could she do for him that would be a return good enough for such great goodness?  Then she took out his last letter, that satisfactory letter, that letter that had been declared to be perfect, and read it and read it again.  No; she did not want Fanny or any one else to tell her that he was true.  Honesty and truth were written on every line of his face, were to be heard in every tone of his voice, could be seen in every sentence that came from his hand.  Dear Harry; dearest Harry!  She knew well that he was true.

Then she also sat down and wrote to him, on that her last night beneath his father’s roof—­wrote to him when she had nearly prepared herself for her bed; and honestly, out of her full heart, thanked him for his love.  There was no need that she should be coy with him now, for she was his own.  “Dear Harry, when I think of all that you have done for me in loving me and choosing me for your wife, I know that I can never pay you all that I owe you.”