se, Mrs. Armitage, that I am taking any pride to myself. Why
on earth Florence should have taken a fancy to such a fellow as I am I
cannot imagine."

"Oh no; not in the least."

"It's all very well for you to laugh, Mrs. Armitage, but as I have
thought of it all I have sometimes been in despair."

"But now you are not in despair."

"No, indeed; just now I am triumphant. I have thought so often that I
was a fool to love her, because everything was so much against me."

"I have wondered that you continued. It always seemed to me that there
wasn't a ghost of a chance for you. Mr. Armitage bade me give it all up,
because he was sure you would never do any good."

"I don't care how much you laugh at me, Mrs. Armitage."

"Let those laugh who win." Then he rushed out into the Paragon, and
absolutely did throw his hat up in the air in his triumph.

CHAPTER XIII.

MRS. MOUNTJOY'S ANGER.

Florence, as she went home in the fly with her mother after the party at
which Harry had spoken to her so openly, did not find the little journey
very happy. Mrs. Mountjoy was a woman endowed with a strong power of
wishing rather than of willing, of desiring rather than of contriving;
but she was one who could make herself very unpleasant when she was
thwarted. Her daughter was now at last fully determined that if she ever
married anybody, that person should be Harry Annesley. Having once
pressed his arm in token of assent, she had as it were given herself
away to him, so that no reasoning, no expostulations could, she thought,
change her purpose; and she had much more power of bringing about her
purposed design than had her mother. But her mother could be obstinate
and self-willed, and would for the time make herself disagreeable.
Florence had assured her lover that everything should be told her mother
that night before she went to bed. But Mrs. Mountjoy did not wait to be
simply told. No sooner were they seated in the fly together than she
began to make her inquiries. "What has that man been saying to you?" she
demanded.

Florence was at once offended by hearing her lover so spoken of, and
could not simply tell the story of Harry's successful courtship, as she
had intended. "Mamma," she said "why do you speak of him like that?"

"Because he is a scamp."

"No, he is no scamp. It is very unkind of you to speak in such terms of
one whom you know is very dear to me."

"I do not know it. He ought not to be dear to you at al