Lady Florence wept with her as she answered:
“But I cannot stay here with you now, and I do so want to make you happy. I have plenty of money, you know, and I want to give you as much as you want.”
“God bless you, my sweet child, for your offer. It will make my heart glad just to raise a pretty stone over my husband’s grave, and to go back to live in the little cottage again.”
Lady Florence gratified her simple wishes, and settled on her a sum of money that kept her in luxury a life-time, with a stout servant to wait on her, and an elderly cousin for a companion.
“And next year, you know, auntie, I am to have a grand wedding at our English home, Earlscourt, and you shall promise me now that you will cross the sea with the Beresfords to see me married,” continued Lady Florence, blushingly.
Mrs. Banks was very proud of the invitation, and many good people in Mount Vernon envied her because she was so loved by the earl’s fair daughter. They forgot that she had earned it all by her goodness to the lonely orphan child when her friends were few, and when they had sneered at her girlish pranks and given her the soubriquet of Fly-away Floy.
Lord Miller would be very lonely when his daughter should leave him for her husband’s home, and one day, when he was grieving over it, Floy, said, roguishly:
“Get Alva to stay with you when I come away. She would make a magnificent countess.”
“The very thing that was in my mind,” he answered, quickly; and before he left America he told Alva of his wish.
“If you can be satisfied with a second love, I will make you a devoted husband,” he said.