the dark as
to the person asked to meet her. "As to my going to Montpelier Place,"
Harry had once said to Mrs. Armitage, "I might as well knock at a
prison-door." Mrs. Mountjoy lived in Montpelier Place.

"I think we could perhaps manage that for you," Mrs. Armitage had
replied, and she had managed it.

"Is she coming?" Harry said to Mrs. Armitage, in an anxious whisper, as
he entered the room.

"She has been here this half-hour,--if you had taken the trouble to leave
your cigars and come and meet her."

"She has not gone?" said Harry, almost awe-struck at the idea.

"No; she is sitting like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief, in
the room inside. She has got horrible news to tell you."

"Oh, heavens! What news?"

"I suppose she will tell you, though she has not been communicative to
me in regard to your royal highness. The news is simply that her mother
is going to take her to Brussels, and that she is to live for a while
amid the ambassadorial splendors with Sir Magnus and his wife."

By retiring from the world Mrs. Mountjoy had not intended to include
such slight social relaxations as Mrs. Armitage's party, for Harry on
turning round encountered her talking to another Cheltenham lady. He
greeted her with his pleasantest smile, to which Mrs. Mountjoy did not
respond quite so sweetly. She had ever greatly feared Harry Annesley,
and had to-day heard a story very much, as she thought, to his
discredit. "Is your daughter here?" asked Harry, with well-trained
hypocrisy. Mrs. Mountjoy could not but acknowledge that Florence was in
the room, and then Harry passed on in pursuit of his quarry.

"Oh, Mr. Annesley, when did you come to Cheltenham?"

"As soon as I heard that Mrs. Armitage was going to have a party I began
to think of coming immediately." Then an idea for the first time shot
through Florence's mind--that her friend Mrs. Armitage was a woman
devoted to intrigue. "What dance have you disengaged? I have something
that I must tell you to-night. You don't mean to say that you will not
give me one dance?" This was merely a lover's anxious doubt on his
part, because Florence had not at once replied to him. "I am told that
you are going away to Brussels."

"Mamma is going on a visit to her brother-in-law."

"And you with her?"

"Of course I shall go with mamma." All this had been said apart, while a
fair-haired, lackadaisical young gentleman was standing twiddling his
thumbs waiting to dance with Flor