There had been a few words spoken between the two elder ladies after the interview between Florence and Lady Mountjoy.  “She is a most self-willed young woman,” said Lady Mountjoy.

“Of course she loves her lover,” said Mrs. Mountjoy, desirous of making some excuse for her own daughter.  The girl was very troublesome, but not the less her daughter.  “I don’t know any of them that don’t who are worth anything.”

“If you regard it in that light, Sarah, she’ll get the better of you.  If she marries him she will be lost; that is the way you have got to look at it.  It is her future happiness you must think of—­and respectability.  She is a headstrong young woman, and has to be treated accordingly.”

“What would you do?”

“I would be very severe.”

“But what am I to do?  I can’t beat her; I can’t lock her up in her room.”

“Then you mean to give it up?”

“No, I don’t.  You shouldn’t be so cross to me,” said poor Mrs. Mountjoy.  When it had reached this the two ladies had become intimate.  “I don’t mean to give it up at all; but what am I to do?”

“Remain here for the next month, and—­and worry her; let Mr. Anderson have his chance with her.  When she finds that everything will smile with her if she accepts him, and that her life will be made a burden to her if she still sticks to her Harry Annesley, she’ll come round, if she be like other girls.  Of course a girl can’t be made to marry a man, but there are ways and means.”  By this Lady Mountjoy meant that the utmost cruelty should be used which would be compatible with a good breakfast, dinner, and bedroom.  Now, Mrs. Mountjoy knew herself to be incapable of this, and knew also, or thought that she knew, that it would not be efficacious.

“You stay here,—­up to Christmas, if you like it,” said Sir Magnus to his sister-in-law.  “She can’t but see Anderson every day, and that goes a long way.  She, of course, puts on a resolute air as well as she can.  They all know how to do that.  Do you be resolute in return.  The deuce is in it if we can’t have our way with her among us.  When you talk of ill usage nobody wants you to put her in chains.  There are different ways of killing a cat.  You get friends to write to you from England about young Annesley, and I’ll do the same.  The truth, of course, I mean.”

“Nothing can be worse than the truth,” said Mrs. Mountjoy, shaking her head, sorrowfully.

“Just so,” said Sir Magnus, who was not at all sorrowful to hear so bad an account of the favored suitor.  “Then we’ll read her the letters.  She can’t help hearing them.  Just the true facts, you know.  That’s fair; nobody can call that cruel.  And then, when she breaks down and comes to our call, we’ll all be as soft as mother’s milk to her.  I shall see her going about the boulevards with a pair of ponies yet.”  Mrs. Mountjoy felt that when Sir Magnus spoke of Florence coming to his call he did not know her daughter.  But she had nothing better to do than to obey Sir Magnus.  Therefore she resolved to stay at Brussels another period of six weeks and told Florence that she had so resolved.  Just at present Brussels and Cheltenham would be all the same to Florence.