"Don't say that,—pray, don't say that,—but do let me tell it." Then he paused; but, as she remained silent, after a moment he resumed the eloquence of his appeal. "By George! Miss Mountjoy, I have been so struck of a heap that I do not know whether I am standing on my head or my heels. You have knocked me so completely off my pins that I am not at all like the same person. Sir Magnus himself says that he never saw such a difference. I only say that to show that I am quite in earnest. Now I am not quite like a fellow that has no business to fall in love with a girl. I have four hundred a year besides my place in the Foreign Office. And then, of course, there are chances." In this he alluded to his brother's failing health, of which he could not explain the details to Miss Mountjoy on the present occasion. "I don't mean to say that this is very splendid, or that it is half what I should like to lay at your feet. But a competence is comfortable."
"Money has nothing to do with it, Mr. Anderson."
"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."