parture that had made him
feel that he ought to rush at once into marriage. Now he had no
consolation, except that of complaining to Mrs. Burton, and going
frequently to the theatre. To Mrs. Burton he did complain a great deal,
pulling her worsteds and threads about the while, sitting in idleness
while she was working, just as Theodore Burton had predicted that he
would do.

"I won't have you so idle, Harry," Mrs. Burton said to him one day. "You
know you ought to be at your office now." It must be admitted, on behalf
of Harry Clavering, that they who liked him, especially women, were able
to become intimate with him very easily. He had comfortable, homely ways
about him, and did not habitually give himself airs. He had become quite
domesticated at the Burtons' house during the ten weeks that he had been
in London, and knew his way to Onslow Crescent almost too well. It may,
perhaps, be surmised correctly that he would not have gone there so
frequently if Mrs. Theodore Burton had been an ugly woman.

"It's all her fault," said he, continuing to snip a piece of worsted
with a pair of scissors as he spoke. "She's too prudent by half."

"Poor Florence!"

"You can't but know that I should work three times as much if she had
given me a different answer. It stands to reason any man would work
under such circumstances as that. Not that I am idle, I believe. I do as
much as any other man about the place."

"I won't have my worsted destroyed all the same. Theodore says that
Florence is right."

"Of course he does; of course he'll say I'm wrong. I won't ask her
again--that's all."

"Oh, Harry! don't say that. You know you'll ask her. You would
to-morrow, if she were here."

"You don't know me, Cecilia, or you would not say so. When I have made
up my mind to a thing, I am generally firm about it. She said something
about two years, and I will not say a word to alter that decision. If it
be altered, it shall be altered by her."

In the meantime he punished Florence by sending her no special answer to
her letter. He wrote to her as usual; but he made no reference to his
last proposal, nor to her refusal. She had asked him to tell her that he
was not angry, but he would tell her nothing of the kind. He told her
when and where and how he would meet her, and convey her from Stratton
to Clavering; gave her some account of a play he had seen; described a
little dinner-party in Onslow Crescent; and told her a funny story about