"Remember! Oh yes. I shall not readily forget it."
"I made you a promise--"
"You did--very kindly."
"And I mean to keep it."
"I"m sure you do, because you"re a gentleman."
"I don"t think I ought to have made it."
"Oh, Mr. Anderson!"
"I don"t think I ought. See what I am giving up."
"Nothing, except the privilege of troubling me."
"But if it should be something else? Do not be angry with me, but, loving you as I do, of course my mind is full of it. I have promised, and must be dumb."
"And I shall be spared great vexation."
"But suppose I were to hear that in six months" time you had married some one else?"
"Mr. Annesley, you mean. Not in six months."
"Somebody else. Not Mr. Annesley."
"There is n.o.body else."
"But there might be."
"It is impossible. After all that I told you, do not you understand?"
"But if there were?" The poor man, as he made the suggestion, looked very piteous. "If there were, I think you should promise me I shall be that somebody else. That would be no more than fair."
She paused a moment to think, frowning the while. "Certainly not."
"Certainly not?"
"I can make no such promise, nor should you ask it. I am to promise that under certain circ.u.mstances I would become your wife, when I know that under no circ.u.mstances I would do so."
"Under no circ.u.mstances?"
"Under none. What would you have me say, Mr. Anderson? Supposing yourself engaged to marry a girl--"
"I wish I were--to you."
"To a girl who loved you, and whom you loved?"
"There"s no doubt about my loving her."
"You can follow my meaning, and I wish that you would do so. What would you think if you were to hear that she had promised to marry some one else in the event of your deserting her? It is out of the question. I mean to be the wife of Harry Annesley. Say that it is not to be so, and you will simply destroy me. Of one thing I may be sure,--that I will marry him or n.o.body. You promised me, not because your promise was necessary for that, but to spare me from trouble till that time shall come. And I am grateful,--very grateful." Then she left him suffering from another headache.
"Was there anything said between you and Mr. Anderson yesterday?" her aunt inquired, that afternoon.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because it is necessary that I should know."
"I do not see the necessity. Mr. Anderson has, at any rate, your permission to say what he likes to me, but I am not on that account bound to tell you all that he does say. But I will tell you. He has promised to trouble me no farther. I told him that I was engaged to Mr.
Annesley, and he, like a gentleman, has a.s.sured me that he will desist."
"Just because you asked him?"
"Yes, aunt; just because I asked him."
"He will not be bound by such a promise for a moment. It is a thing not to be heard of. If that kind of thing is to go on, any young lady will be ent.i.tled to ask any young gentleman not to say a word of marriage, just at her request."
"Some of the young ladies would not care for that, perhaps."
"Don"t be impertinent."
"I should not, for one, aunt; only that I am already engaged."
"And of course the young ladies would be bound to make such requests, which would go for nothing at all. I never heard of anything so monstrous. You are not only to have the liberty of refusing, but are to be allowed to bind a gentleman not to ask!"
"He has promised."
"Pshaw! It means nothing."
"It is between him and me. I asked him because I wished to save myself from being troubled."
"As for that other man, my dear, it is quite out of the question. From all that I hear, it is on the cards that he may be arrested and put into prison. I am quite sure that at any rate he deserves it. The letters which Sir Magnus gets about him are fearful. The things that he has done,--well, penal servitude for life would be the proper punishment. And it will come upon him sooner or later. I never knew a man of that kind escape. And you now to come and tell us that you intend to be his wife!"
"I do," said Florence, bobbing her head.
"And what your uncle says to you has no effect?"
"Not the least in the world; nor what my aunt says. I believe that neither the one nor the other know what they are talking about. You have been defaming a gentleman of the highest character, a Fellow of a college, a fine-hearted, n.o.ble, high-spirited man, simply because--because--because--" Then she burst into tears and rushed out of the room; but she did not break down before she had looked at her aunt, and spoken to her aunt with a fierce indignation which had altogether served to silence Lady Mountjoy for the moment.
PART II.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.