The poor girl said nothing, but still continued to weep, while the
captain stood by looking as black as a thunder-cloud.

"What is it, Mountjoy?" said Mrs. Mountjoy, turning to him.

"I have told Florence some of my troubles," said he, "and they seemed to
have changed her mind toward me."

There was something in this which was detestable to Florence,--an
unfairness, a dishonesty in putting off upon his trouble that absence of
love which she had at last been driven by his vows to confess. She knew
that it was not because of his present trouble, which she understood to
be terrible, but which she could not in truth comprehend. He had blurted
it all out roughly,--the story as told by his father of his mother's
dishonor, of his own insignificance in the world, of the threatened
loss of the property, of the heaviness of his debts,--and added his
conviction that his father had invented it all, and was, in fact, a
thorough rascal. The full story of his debts he kept back, not with any
predetermined falseness, but because it is so difficult for a man to own
that he has absolutely ruined himself by his own folly. It was not
wonderful that the girl should not have understood such a story as had
then been told her. Why was he defending his mother? Why was he accusing
his father? The accusations against her uncle, whom she did know, were
more fearful to her than these mysterious charges against her aunt, whom
she did not know, from which her son defended her. But then he had
spoken passionately of his own love, and she had understood that. He had
besought her to confess that she loved him, and then she had at once
become stubborn. There was something in the word "confess" which grated
against her feelings. It seemed to imply a conviction on his part that