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
I could not figure out that amongst her acquaintances in Stamford
there was any fellow that would fill the bill. The most of them
were not as wealthy as I, and those that were were not the type to
give up the fascinations of Wall Street even for the protracted
companionship of Florence. But nothing really happened during
the month of July. On the 1st of August Florence apparently told
her aunts that she intended to marry me.
She had not told me so, but there was no doubt about the aunts,
for, on that afternoon, Miss Florence Hurlbird, Senior, stopped me
on my way to Florence's sitting-room and took me, agitatedly, into
the parlour.
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