"Come, young men," said the painter; "my daughter seems tired, so you had better bid her good-night, and come and smoke a cigar in my painting-room." Florence rose and made a curtsey, which included both her admirers; but she did not seem to perceive Mr. Lobyer's out-stretched hand, nor did she deign to reward Philip for the _empressement_ with which he flew to open the door for her as she passed out of the room. But when she was alone in her own room, sitting before her pretty dressing-table, and looking at herself dreamily in the glass as she removed the slender golden necklace and glittering locket from her neck, it was of Philip and not of Mr. Lobyer that she thought. "What a nice fellow he would be if he were rich!" she said to herself. "How frank and brave he is! I never like him so much as when he is uncivil to me. And if I were quite a different sort of girl, I can fancy that it would be very nice to marry him, and live in lodgings, and take an interest in his painting. But what would become of me if I were to marry such a man?--I, who haven't the faintest idea of a pudding, and never could sew a button on one of my muslin sleeves without spoiling half-a-dozen needles, and making myself like a murderer with blood. I never could marry a poor man after the things I've said. I can fancy how Lucy Chamberlayne, and those Verner girls, and Mary Masters, and all the girls who know me, would laugh. No, the day is past for that sort of thing: and as my heart is so free that I don't even know whether I've got a heart, and as Mr. Lobyer is by no means bad-looking, and as papa seems to like him--or, at any rate, doesn't seem to dislike him,--I suppose it is my fate to be mistress of Pevenshall." CHAPTER XI. AT NASEDALE. Mr. Horatio Mountjoy, the Anglo-Indian judge for whom Mrs. MacClaverhouse had made her little dinner, had been one of the departed general's most intimate friends, and having now returned to England to pass the rest of his days in peaceful retirement, was anxious to show all possible kindness to the general's widow. He had bought an estate in Surrey since his return,--a charming old mansion of the Queen Anne period, with prim gardens of the Dutch school, a noble park, and a home-farm large enough to admit all the experiments of an amateur agriculturist, but not so extensive as to swamp the experimentalist's fortune. It was to this pleasant retreat that Mr. Mountjoy invited his old friend's widow and her niece. "We are to have a very nice party," wrote the judge's wife; "and Horatio begs me to tell you that we shall expect _you_ and dear Lady Cecil to stay till Christmas--even if our other friends grow tired of us, and run away before then. I thought your niece was looking pale and ill; but the breezes from the Surrey hills will set her up for next season."