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Soon after lunch on that day Florence went out alone to execute some small commissions for Mrs Fortescue. She was wearing a sealskin cap and very _chic_ little sealskin jacket. No one could look nicer than she did in her pretty and expensive dress, and nothing could become her radiant complexion and those changeful eyes of hers better than the sealskin cap, which revealed beneath its narrow brim just a touch of that bright chestnut hair which Lieutenant Reid thought of by day and dreamed of by night. It was only last night that he dreamed he was touching that hair and even kissing it and calling it his own. Now it was a queer dream, for his locks were harsh and, of course, very short, and although he had thick hair, it was not exactly beautiful. He could only have called Florence's chestnut locks his own in one sense. Somehow, as he lay in bed that morning and thought about the girl, he imagined himself more than ever in love with her.
"I do care for her, quite independently of her money," he thought. "She is the happiest, happiest girl on earth, and the most beautiful. I always had a _penchant_ for her, but now I am in love with her."