It was rather a bold idea; but she was not burdened with over-delicacy or scrupulosity, and on the other hand, was by no means deficient in tact, and possessed besides the inestimable of supreme, unruffled self-confidence. And, to do her justice, poor girl, she was strengthened by the thought of the happiness the news of such a marriage would diffuse over the dear, care-worn faces at home! Two distinct objects lay before her to achieve. In the first place there was Lady Severn to be won over, unconsciously, to her side. Liking must be deepened to affection, esteem, and admiration judiciously heightened; till one day it should suddenly break upon the good lady, entirely as an idea of her own, that here, beside her, in the person of her young favourite, the daughter of her own, never-forgotten, first love, was the very wife for her son; the woman of all others, beautiful, sensible, and cheerful, whom she would choose as a helpmeet for the dreamy, studious, unpractical Sir Ralph. So thought Florence for Lady Severn, and so, ere long, the unconscious lady was made to think for herself. For, though no plain words had as yet passed between them on the subject, Florence believed, and rightly, that the first of her designs was in a fair way towards being accomplished. But with the contemplation of the second came the “tug of war.” Florence with all her self-belief, with all her happy confidence in the irresistible nature of her charms, felt at a loss. “Tug of war” is not a happy quotation in this instance, for it was no case of Greek versus Greek, but the involuntary repulsion of an utterly alien nature, which so baffled this girl in all her efforts. Ralph puzzled her. There were so many things about him which he could not understand. No wonder! For, if only she had known it, it would have been nearer the truth to say that there was hardly one thing about him; which, with all the good-will in the world, all the capacity for lending herself to his peculiarities on which she prided herself, she could ever have come to understand. Her opinion of human nature in general was by no means an exalted one. Disinterested goodness, in the highest sense, was to her incredible, or rather inconceivable. Strange, at first sight, this may appear. Strange in so young a girl, for Florence was little more than twenty, and her actual experience of the world had not been very extensive. Strange, and no less sad, for the disbelief, or slowness to believe, in the truth and goodness of our fellows, which is almost excusable in a soured and world-tried man or woman of middle age, revolts and repels us in a very young person. Meeting with it we cannot but suspect some terrible defect in the early up-bringing of such an one, if not some crooked tendency of peculiar strength innate in the character itself.