ughters, Florence was aware that her mother simply required a
little time before she made up her mind. "It is not that I want to go
London for the pleasure of it, mamma."

"I know that, my dear."

"Nor yet merely to see him!--though, of course, I do long to see him!"

"Of course you do--why shouldn't you?"

"But Cecilia is so very prudent, and she thinks that it will be better.
And she would not have pressed it, unless Theodore had thought so too!"

"I thought Theodore would have written to me!"

"But he writes so seldom."

"I expected a letter from him now, as I had written to him."

"About Harry, do you mean?"

"Well; yes. I did not mention it, as I was aware I might make you
uneasy. But I saw that you were unhappy at not hearing from him."

"Oh, mamma, do let me go."

"Of course you shall go if you wish it; but let me speak to papa before
anything is quite decided."

Mrs. Burton did speak to her husband, and it was arranged that Florence
should go up to Onslow Crescent. But Mrs. Burton, though she had been
always autocratic about her unmarried daughters, had never been
autocratic about herself. When she hinted that she also might go, she
saw that the scheme was not approved, and she at once abandoned it.

"It would look as if we were all afraid," said Mr. Burton; "and, after
all, what does it come to? A young gentleman does not write to his
sweetheart for two or three weeks. I used to think myself the best lover
in the world if I wrote once a month."

"There was no penny post then, Mr. Burton."

"And I often wish there was none now," said Mr. Burton. That matter was
therefore decided, and Florence wrote back to her sister-in-law, saying
that she would go up to London on the third day from that. In the
meantime, Harry Clavering and Theodore Burton had met.

Has it ever been the lot of any unmarried male reader of these pages to
pass three or four days in London, without anything to do--to have to
get through them by himself--and to have that burden on his shoulder,
with the additional burden of some terrible, wearing misery, away from
which there seems to be no road, and out of which there is apparently no
escape? That was Harry Clavering's condition for some few days after the
evening which he last passed in the company of Lady Ongar; and I will
ask any such unmarried man whether, in such a plight, there was for him
any other alternative but to wish himself dead? In such a condition, a
man can simp