Chapter XXXVII

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.