Florence Burton’s Return
Though nobody had expressed to Florence at Stratton
any fear of Harry Clavering’s perfidy, that
young lady was not altogether easy in her mind.
Weeks and weeks had passed, and she had not heard from
him. Her mother was manifestly uneasy, and had
announced some days before Florence’s departure,
her surprise and annoyance in not having heard from
her eldest son. When Florence inquired as to the
subject of the expected letter, her mother put the
question aside, saying, with a little assumed irritability,
that of course she liked to get an answer to her letters
when she took the trouble to write them. And when
the day for Florence’s journey drew nigh, the
old lady became more and more uneasy—showing
plainly that she wished her daughter was not going
to London. But Florence, as she was quite determined
to go, said nothing to all this. Her father also
was uneasy, and neither of them had for some days
named her lover in her hearing. She knew that
there was something wrong, and felt that it was better
that she should go to London and learn the truth.
No female heart was ever less prone to suspicion than
the heart of Florence Burton. Among those with
whom she had been most intimate nothing had occurred
to teach her that men could be false, or women either.
When she had heard from Harry Clavering the story of
Julia Brabazon, she had, not making much accusation
against the sinner in speech, put Julia down in the
books of her mind as a bold, bad woman, who could
forget her sex, and sell her beauty and her womanhood
for money. There might be such a woman here and
there, or such a man. There were murderers in
the world—but the bulk of mankind is not
made subject to murderers. Florence had never
considered the possibility that she herself could
become liable to such a misfortune. And then,
when the day came that she was engaged, her confidence
in the man chosen by her was unlimited. Such
love as hers rarely suspects. He with whom she
had to do was Harry Clavering, and therefore she could
not be deceived. Moreover, she was supported
by a self-respect and a self-confidence which did not
at first allow her to dream that a man who had once
loved her would ever wish to leave her. It was
to her as though a sacrament as holy as that of the
church had passed between them, and she could not easily
bring herself to think that that sacrament had been
as nothing to Harry Clavering. But nevertheless
there was something wrong, and when she left her father’s
house at Stratton, she was well aware that she must
prepare herself for tidings that might be evil.
She could bear anything, she thought, without disgracing
herself; but there were tidings which might send her
back to Stratton a broken woman, fit perhaps to comfort
the declining years of her father and mother, but
fit for nothing else.
