"My belief is, that settling down would be the best thing in the world
to make me work."

"We'll try what a year will do. So Florence is to go to your father's
house at Easter?"

"Yes, sir; she has been good enough to promise to come, if you have no
objection."

"It is quite as well that they should know her early. I only hope they
will like her, as well as we like you. Now I'll say good-night--and
good-by." Then Harry went, and walking up and down the High Street of
Stratton, thought of all that he had done during the past year.

On his arrival at Stratton, that idea of perpetual misery arising from
blighted affection was still strong within his breast. He had given all
his heart to a false woman who had betrayed him. He had risked all his
fortune on one cast of the die, and, gambler-like, had lost everything.
On the day of Julia's marriage he had shut himself up at the
school--luckily it was a holiday--and had flattered himself that he had
gone through some hours of intense agony. No doubt he did suffer
somewhat, for in truth he had loved the woman; but such sufferings are
seldom perpetual, and with him they had been as easy of cure as with
most others. A little more than a year had passed, and now he was
already engaged to another woman. As he thought of this he did not by
any means accuse himself of inconstancy or of weakness of heart. It
appeared to him now the most natural thing in the world that he should
love Florence Burton. In those old days he had never seen Florence, and
had hardly thought seriously of what qualities a man really wants in a