faintly hinted--she did not want much physical passion in the
affair. Americans, you know, can envisage such unions without
blinking.

She gave cut this information in floods of bright talk--she would
pop a little bit of it into comments over a view of the Rialto,
Venice, and, whilst she was brightly describing Balmoral Castle,
she would say that her ideal husband would he one who could get
her received at the British Court. She had spent, it seemed, two
months in Great Britain--seven weeks in touring from Stratford to
Strathpeffer, and one as paying guest in an old English family near
Ledbury, an impoverished, but still stately family, called
Bagshawe. They were to have spent two months more in that
tranquil bosom, but inopportune events, apparently in her uncle's
business, had caused their rather hurried return to Stamford. The
young man called Jimmy had remained in Europe to perfect his
knowledge of that continent. He certainly did: he was most useful
to us afterwards.

But the point that came out--that there was no mistaking--was that
Florence was coldly and calmly determined to take no look at any
man who could not give her a European settlement. Her glimpse
of English home life had effected this. She meant, on her
marriage, to have a year in Paris, and then to have her husband
buy some real estate in the neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, from
which place the Hurlbirds had come in the year 1688. On the
strength of that she was going to take her place in the ranks of
English county society. That was fixed.

I used to feel mightily elevated when I considered these details, for