style="font-size:15px;"> "I am well off," he went on, eagerly, "and I will tell you a secret. I have bought the advowson of this living; I happened to hear that it was going, and got it at a bargain. I don't think that Halford's life is worth five years' purchase."
"Why do you want to marry Eva, Mr. Plowden," asked Florence, ignoring this piece of information; "you are not in love with her?"
"In love! No, Miss Ceswick. I don't think that sensible men fall in love; they leave that to boys and women."
"Oh! Then why do you want to marry Eva? It will be best to tell me frankly, Mr. Plowden."
He hesitated, and then came to the conclusion that, with a person of Florence's penetration, frankness was the best game.
"Well, as you must know, your sister is an extraordinarily beautiful woman."
"And would therefore form a desirable addition to your establishment?"
"Precisely," said Mr. Plowden. "Also," he went on, "she is a distinguished-looking woman, and quite the lady."
Florence shuddered at the phrase.
"And would therefore give you social status, Mr. Plowden?"
"Yes. She is also sprung from an ancient family."
Florence smiled, and looked at Mr. Plowden with an air that said more plainly than any words, "Which /you/ clearly are not."
"In short, I am anxious to get married, and I admire your sister Eva more than anybody I ever saw."
"All of which are very satisfactory reasons, Mr. Plowden; all you have to do is convince my sister of the many advantages you have to offer her, and--to win her affections."
"Ah, Miss Ceswick, that is just the point. She told me that her affections were already irredeemably engaged, and that she had none to give. If only I have the opportunity however, I shall hope to be able to outdistance my rival."
Florence looked at him scrutinisingly as she answered:
"You do not know Ernest Kershaw, or you would not be so confident."
"Why am I not as good as this Ernest?" he asked; for Florence's remark, identical as it was with that of Jeremy, wounded his vanity intensely.
"Well, Mr. Plowden, I do not want to be rude, but it is impossible for me to conceive a woman's affections being won away from Ernest Kershaw by you. You are so very /different/."
If Mr. Plowden wanted a straightforward answer, he had certainly got it. For some moments he sat in sulky silence, and then he said:
"I suppose, if that is the case, there is nothing to be done."
"I never said that. Women are frequently married whose affections are very much engaged elsewhere. You know how they win their wives in savage countries, Mr. Plowden: they catch them. Marriage by capture is one of the oldest institutions in the world."
"Well!"
"Well, the same institution still obtains in England, only we don't call it by that name. Do you suppose that no women are hunted down nowadays? Ah, very many are; the would-be husband heads the pack, and all the loving relatives swell its cry."
"You mean that your sister can be hunted down," he said bluntly.
"I! I mean nothing, except that the persistent suitor on the spot often has a better chance than the lover at a distance, however dear he may be."
Then Mr. Plowden took his leave. Florence watched him walking down the garden-path.
"I am glad Jeremy shook you soundly," she said aloud. "Poor Eva!"
CHAPTER VI
MR. PLOWDEN GOES A-WOOING
Mr. Plowden was not a suitor to let the grass grow under his feet. As he once took the trouble to explain to Florence, he considered that there was nothing like boldness in wooing, and he acted up to his convictions. Possessing no more delicacy of feeling than a bull-elephant, and as much consideration for the lady as the elephant has for a lily it tramples underfoot, figuratively speaking, he charged at Eva every time he saw her. He laid wait for her round corners, and asked her to marry him; he dropped in on her at odd hours, and insisted upon her marrying him. It was quite useless for her to say, "No, no, no," or to appeal to his better feelings or compassion, for he had none. He simply would not listen to her; but encouraged thereto by the moral support which he had received from Florence, he crushed the poor girl with his amorous eloquence.
It was a merry chase that Florence sat and watched with a dark smile on her scornful lip. In vain did the poor white doe dash along at her best speed; the great black hound was ever at her flank, and each time she turned came bounding at her throat. This idea of a chase, and a hound, and a doe took such a strong possession of Florence's saturnine imagination, that she actually made a drawing of it, for she was a clever artist, and not without training, throwing, by a few strokes of her pencil, a perfect likeness of Mr. Plowden into the fierce features of the hound. The doe she drew with Eva's dark eyes, and when she had done them there was such agony in her tortured gaze that she could not bear to look at them, and tore the picture up.
One day Florence came in, and found her sister weeping.
"Well, Eva, what is it now?" she asked, contemptuously.
"Mr. Plowden," sobbed Eva.
"Oh, Mr. Plowden again! Well, my dear, if you will be so beautiful, and encourage men, you must take the consequences."
"I never encouraged Mr. Plowden."
"Nonsense, Eva! you will not get me to believe that. If you did not encourage him he would not go on making love to you. Gentlemen are not fond of being snubbed."
"Mr. Plowden is not a gentleman," exclaimed Eva.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because a gentleman would not persecute one as he does. He will not take No for an answer, and to-day he kissed my hand. I tried to get it away from him, but I could not. Oh, I hate him!"
"I tell you what it is, Eva; I have no patience with you and your fancies. Mr. Plowden is a very respectable man; he is a clergyman, and well off, altogether quite the sort of man to marry. Ah, Ernest--I am sick of Ernest! If he wanted to marry you, he should not go shooting people, and then running off to South Africa. He was all very well to flirt with while he was here; now he has made a fool of himself and gone, and there is an end of him."
"But, Florence, I love Ernest. I think I love him more dearly every day, and I detest Mr. Plowden."
"Very likely. I don't ask you to love Mr. Plowden; I ask you to marry him. What have love and marriage got to do with each other, I should like to know? If people were always to marry the people they loved, things would soon get into a pretty mess. Look here, Eva, as you know I do not often obtrude myself or my interests, but I think that I have a right to be considered a little in this matter. You have now got an opportunity of making a home for both of us. There
