Florence Burton thought herself the happiest girl in the world. There
nothing wanting perfection of her bliss. She could perceive, though she
never allowed her mind to dwell upon the fact, that her lover was
superior in many respects to the men whom her sisters had married. He
was better educated, better looking, in fact more fully a gentleman at
all points than either Scarness or any of the others. She liked her
sisters' husbands very well, and in former days, before Harry Clavering
had come to Stratton, she had never taught herself to think that she, if
she married, would want anything different from that which Providence
had given to them. She had never thrown up her head, or even thrown up
her nose, and told herself that she would demand something better than
that. But not the less was she alive to the knowledge that something
better had come in her way, and that that something better was now her
own. She was very proud of her lover, and, no doubt, in some gently
feminine way showed that she was so as she made her way about among her
friends at Stratton. Any idea that she herself was better educated,
better looking, or more clever than her elder sisters, and that,
therefore, she was deserving of a higher order of husband, had never
entered her mind. The Burtons in London--Theodore Burton and his
wife--who knew her well, and who, of all the family, were best able to
appreciate her worth, had long been of opinion that she deserved some
specially favored lot in life. The question with them would be, whether
Harry Clavering was good enough for her.

Everybody at Stratton knew that she was engaged, and when they wished
her joy she made no coy denials. Her sisters had all been engaged in the
same way, and their marriages had gone off in regular sequence to their