"Well," she said, after a pause, "I suppose great talent like yours does content one. You certainly are marvellously brilliant. I read your last story, and thought it the cleverest of the three. But I wish you were not so pessimistic. It is terrible not to help people. It seems to me you hinder people when you write as you do."
"I must write as the spirit moves me," said Florence, in a would-be flippant voice, "and Tom likes my writing; he says it grows on him."
"So much the worse for Tom."
"Well, I will say good-night now, Edith. I am tired, and mother will be disturbed if I go to bed too late."
Florence went into her own flat, shut and locked the door, and, lying down, tried to sleep. But she was excited and nervous, and no repose would come to her. Up to the present time, since her engagement, she had managed to keep thought at bay; but now thoughts the most terrible, the most dreary, came in like a flood and banished sleep. Towards morning she found herself silently crying.
"Oh, why cannot I break off my engagement with Tom Franks? Why cannot I tell Maurice Trevor the truth?" she said to herself.
Early the next day Mrs. Aylmer the less received a telegram from Bertha Keys. This was to announce the death of the owner of Aylmer's Court. Mrs. Aylmer the less immediately became almost frantic with excitement. She wanted to insist on Florence accompanying her at once to the Court. Florence stoutly refused to stir an inch. Finally the widow was obliged to go off without her daughter.
"There is little doubt," she said, "that we are both handsomely remembered. I, of course, have my fifty pounds a year—that was settled on me many years ago—but I shall have far more than that now, and you, my poor child, will have a nice tidy fortune, ten to twelve or twenty thousand pounds, and then if you will only marry Maurice Trevor, who inherits all the rest of the wealth, how comfortable you will be! I suppose you would like me to live with you at Aylmer's Court, would you not?"
"Oh, mother, don't," said poor Florence. "I have a feeling which I cannot explain that Mrs. Aylmer will disappoint everyone. Don't count on her wealth, mother. Oh, mother, don't think so much of money, for it is not the most important thing in the world."
"Money not the most important thing in the world!" said Mrs. Aylmer, backing and looking at her daughter with bright eyes of horror. "Flo, my poor child, you really are getting weak in your intellect."