"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."