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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Ernest Maltravers, by Bulwer-Lytton, Book 9
+#76 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+
+Title: Ernest Maltravers, Book 9
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7648]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 11, 2004]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERNEST MALTRAVERS, LYTTON, V9 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+                and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+   I go, the bride of Acheron.--SOPH. /Antig./
+
+   These things are in the Future.--/Ib./ 1333.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+    *  *  *  "There the action lies
+   In its true nature  *  *  * *
+    *  *  *   What then?  What rests?
+   Try what repentance can!"--/Hamlet/.
+
+  "I doubt he will be dead or ere I come."--/King John/.
+
+IT was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers turned from
+Lord Saxingham's door.  The knockers were muffled--the windows on the
+third story were partially closed.  There was sickness in that house.
+
+Lumley's face was unusually grave; it was even sad.  "So young--so
+beautiful," he muttered.  "If ever I loved woman, I do believe I loved
+her:--that love must be my excuse. . . . I repent of what I have
+done--but I could not foresee that a mere lover's stratagem was to end
+in such effects--the metaphysician was very right when he said, 'We only
+sympathise with feelings we know ourselves.'  A little disappointment in
+love could not have hurt me much--it is d----d odd it should hurt her
+so.  I am altogether out of luck: old Templeton--I beg his pardon, Lord
+Vargrave--(by-the-by, he gets heartier every day--what a constitution he
+has!) seems cross with me.  He did not like the idea that I should marry
+Lady Florence--and when I thought that vision might have been realised,
+hinted that I was disappointing some expectations he had formed; I can't
+make out what he means.  Then, too, the government have offered that
+place to Maltravers instead of to me.  In fact, my star is not in the
+ascendant.  Poor Florence, though,--I would really give a great deal to
+know her restored to health!--I have done a villainous thing, but I
+thought it only a clever one.  However, regret is a fool's passion.  By
+Jupiter!--talking of fools, here comes Cesarini."
+
+Wan, haggard, almost spectral, his hat over his brows, his dress
+neglected, his air reckless and fierce, Cesarini crossed the way, and
+thus accosted Lumley:
+
+"We have murdered her, Ferrers; and her ghost will haunt us to our dying
+day!"
+
+"Talk prose; you know I am no poet.  What do you mean?"
+
+"She is worse to-day," groaned Cesarini, in a hollow voice.  "I wander
+like a lost spirit round the house; I question all who come from it.
+Tell me--oh, tell me, is there hope?"
+
+"I do, indeed, trust so," replied Ferrers, fervently.  "The illness has
+only of late assumed an alarming appearance.  At first it was merely a
+severe cold, caught by imprudent exposure one rainy night.  Now they
+fear it has settled on the lungs; but if we could get her abroad, all
+might be well."
+
+"You think so, honestly?"
+
+"I do.  Courage, my friend; do not reproach yourself; it has nothing to
+do with us.  She was taken ill of a cold, not of a letter, man!"
+
+"No, no; I judge her heart by my own.  Oh, that I could recall the past!
+Look at me; I am the wreck of what I was; day and night the recollection
+of my falsehood haunts me with remorse."
+
+"Pshaw!--we will go to Italy together, and in your beautiful land love
+will replace love."
+
+"I am half resolved, Ferrers."
+
+"Ha!--to do what?"
+
+"To write--to reveal all to her."
+
+The hardy complexion of Ferrers grew livid; his brow became dark with a
+terrible expression.
+
+"Do so, and fall the next day by my hand; my aim in slighter quarrel
+never erred."
+
+"Do you dare to threaten me?"
+
+"Do you dare to betray me?  Betray one who, if he sinned, sinned on your
+account--in your cause; who would have secured to you the loveliest
+bride, and the most princely dower in England; and whose only offence
+against you is that he cannot command life and health?"
+
+"Forgive me," said the Italian, with great emotion,--"forgive me, and do
+not misunderstand; I would not have betrayed /you/--there is honour
+among villains.  I would have confessed only my own crime; I would never
+have revealed yours--why should I?--it is unnecessary."
+
+"Are you in earnest--are you sincere?"
+
+"By my soul!"
+
+"Then, indeed, you are worthy of my friendship.  You will assume the
+whole forgery--an ugly word, but it avoids circumlocution--to be your
+own?"
+
+"I will."
+
+Ferrers paused a moment, and then stopped suddenly short.
+
+"You will swear this!"
+
+"By all that is holy."
+
+"Then mark me, Cesarini; if to-morrow Lady Florence be worse, I will
+throw no obstacle in the way of your confession, should you resolve to
+make it; I will even use that influence which you leave me, to palliate
+your offence, to win your pardon.  And yet to resign your hopes--to
+surrender one so loved to the arms of one so hated--it is
+magnanimous--it is noble--it is above my standard!  Do as you will."
+
+Cesarini was about to reply, when a servant on horseback abruptly turned
+the corner, almost at full speed.  He pulled in--his eye fell upon
+Lumley--he dismounted.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Ferrers," said the man breathlessly, "I have been to your
+house; they told me I might find you at Lord Saxingham's--I was just
+going there--"
+
+"Well, well, what is the matter?"
+
+"My poor master, sir--my lord, I mean--"
+
+"What of him?"
+
+"Had a fit, sir--the doctors are with him--my mistress--for my lord
+can't speak--sent me express for you."
+
+"Lend me your horse--there, just lengthen the stirrups."
+
+While the groom was engaged at the saddle, Ferrers turned to Cesarini.
+"Do nothing rashly," said he; "I would say, if I might, nothing at all,
+without consulting me; but mind, I rely, at all events, on your
+promise--your oath."
+
+"You may," said Cesarini, gloomily.
+
+"Farewell, then," said Lumley, as he mounted; and in a few moments he
+was out of sight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  "O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,
+
+     *  *  *  *  *
+
+   Dost thou here lie?"--/Julius Caesar/.
+
+AS Lumley leapt from his horse at his uncle's door, the disorder and
+bustle of those demesnes, in which the severe eye of the master usually
+preserved a repose and silence as complete as if the affairs of life
+were carried on by clockwork, struck upon him sensibly.  Upon the trim
+lawn the old women employed in cleaning and weeding the walks were all
+assembled in a cluster, shaking their heads ominously in concert, and
+carrying on their comments in a confused whisper.  In the hall, the
+housemaid (and it was the first housemaid whom Lumley had ever seen in
+that house, so invisibly were the wheels of the domestic machine carried
+on) was leaning on her broom, "swallowing with open mouth a footman's
+news."  It was as if, with the first slackening of the rigid rein, human
+nature broke loose from the conventual stillness in which it had ever
+paced its peaceful path in that formal mansion.
+
+"How is he?"
+
+"My lord is better, sir; he has spoken, I believe."
+
+At this moment a young face, swollen and red with weeping, looked down
+from the stairs; and presently Evelyn rushed breathlessly into the hall.
+
+"Oh, come up--come up--cousin Lumley; he cannot, cannot die in your
+presence; you always seem so full of life!  He cannot die; you do not
+think he will die?  Oh, take me with you, they won't let me go to him!"
+
+"Hush, my dear little girl, hush; follow me lightly--that is right."
+
+Lumley reached the door, tapped gently--entered; and the child also
+stole in unobserved or at least unprevented.  Lumley drew aside the
+curtains; the new lord was lying on his bed, with his head propped by
+pillows, his eyes wide open, with a glassy, but not insensible stare,
+and his countenance fearfully changed.
+
+Lady Vargrave was kneeling on the other side of the bed, one hand
+clasped in her husband's, the other bathing his temples, and her tears
+falling, without sob or sound, fast and copiously down her pale fair
+cheeks.
+
+Two doctors were conferring in the recess of the window; an apothecary
+was mixing drugs at a table; and two of the oldest female servants of
+the house were standing near the physicians, trying to overhear what was
+said.
+
+"My dear, dear uncle, how are you?" asked Lumley.
+
+"Ah, you are come, then," said the dying man, in a feeble yet distinct
+voice; "that is well--I have much to say to you."
+
+"But not now--not now--you are not strong enough," said the wife,
+imploringly.
+
+The doctors moved to the bedside.  Lord Vargrave waved his hand, and
+raised his head.
+
+"Gentlemen," said he, "I feel as if death were hastening upon me; I have
+much need, while my senses remain, to confer with my nephew.  Is the
+present a fitting time?--if I delay, are you sure that I shall have
+another?"
+
+The doctors looked at each other.
+
+"My lord," said one, "it may perhaps settle and relieve your mind to
+converse with your nephew; afterwards you may more easily compose
+yourself to sleep."
+
+"Take this cordial, then," said the other doctor.
+
+The sick man obeyed.  One of the physicians approached Lumley, and
+beckoned him aside.
+
+"Shall we send for his lordship's lawyer?" whispered the leech.
+
+"I am his heir-at-law," thought Lumley.  "Why, /no/, my dear sir--no, I
+think not, unless he expresses a desire to see him; doubtless my poor
+uncle has already settled his worldly affairs.  What is his state?"
+
+The doctor shook his head.  "I will speak to you, sir, after you have
+left his lordship."
+
+"What is the matter there?" cried the patient, sharply and querulously.
+"Clear the room--I would be alone with my nephew."
+
+The doctors disappeared; the old women reluctantly followed; when,
+suddenly, the little Evelyn sprang forward and threw herself on the
+breast of the dying man, sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+"My poor child!--my sweet child--my own, own darling!" gasped out Lord
+Vargrave, folding his weak arms round her; "bless you--bless you! and
+God will bless you.  My wife," he added, with a voice far more tender
+than Lumley had ever before heard him address to Lady Vargrave, "if
+these be the last words I utter to you, let them express all the
+gratitude I feel for you, for duties never more piously discharged: you
+did not love me, it is true; and in health and pride that knowledge
+often made me unjust to you.  I have been severe--you have had much to
+bear--forgive me."
+
+"Oh! do not talk thus; you have been nobler, kinder than my deserts.
+How much I owe you--how little I have done in return!"
+
+"I cannot bear this; leave me, my dear, leave me.  I may live yet--I
+hope I may--I do not want to die.  The cup may pass from me.
+Go--go--and you, my child."
+
+"Ah, let /me/ stay."
+
+Lord Vargrave kissed the little creature, as she clung to his neck, with
+passionate affection, and then, placing her in her mother's arms, fell
+back exhausted on his pillow.  Lumley, with handkerchief to his eyes,
+opened the door to Lady Vargrave, who sobbed bitterly, and carefully
+closing it, resumed his station by his uncle.
+
+When Lumley Ferrers left the room, his countenance was gloomy and
+excited rather than sad.  He hurried to the room which he usually
+occupied, and remained there for some hours while his uncle slept--a
+long and sound sleep.  But the mother and the stepchild (now restored to
+the sick-room) did not desert their watch.
+
+It wanted about an hour to midnight, when the senior physician sought
+the nephew.
+
+"Your uncle asks for you, Mr. Ferrers; and I think it right to say that
+his last moments approach.  We have done all that can be done."
+
+"Is he fully aware of his danger?"
+
+"He is; and has spent the last two hours in prayer--it is a Christian's
+death-bed, sir."
+
+"Humph!" said Ferrers, as he followed the physician.  The room was
+darkened--a single lamp, carefully shaded, burned on a table, on which
+lay the Book of Life in Death: and with awe and grief on their faces,
+the mother and the child were kneeling beside the bed.
+
+"Come here, Lumley," faltered forth the fast-dying man.
+
+"There are none here but you three--nearest and dearest to me?--That is
+well.  Lumley, then, you know all--my wife, he knows all.  My child,
+give your hand to your cousin--so you are now plighted.  When you grow
+up, Evelyn, you will know that it is my last wish and prayer that you
+should be the wife of Lumley Ferrers.  In giving you this angel, Lumley,
+I atone to you for all seeming injustice.  And to you, my child, I
+secure the rank and honours to which I have painfully climbed, and which
+I am forbidden to enjoy.  Be kind to her, Lumley--you have a good and
+frank heart--let it be her shelter--she has never known a harsh word.
+God bless you all, and God forgive me--pray for me.  Lumley, to-morrow
+you will be Lord Vargrave, and by and by" (here a ghastly, but exultant
+smile flitted over the speaker's countenance), "you will be my
+Lady--Lady Vargrave.  Lady--so--so--Lady Var--"
+
+The words died on his trembling lips; he turned round, and, though he
+continued to breathe for more than an hour, Lord Vargrave never uttered
+another syllable.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+               "Hopes and fears
+   Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
+   Look down--on what?--a fathomless abyss."--YOUNG.
+
+  "Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!"
+               /Much Ado about Nothing/.
+
+THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly severe and
+rankling.  It is true that he had never been what is called violently in
+love with Florence Lascelles; but from the moment in which he had been
+charmed and surprised into the character of a declared suitor, it was
+consonant with his scrupulous and loyal nature to view only the bright
+side of Florence's gifts and qualities, and to seek to enamour his
+grateful fancy with her beauty, her genius, and her tenderness for
+himself.  He had thus forced and formed his thoughts and hopes to centre
+all in one object; and Florence and the Future had grown words which
+conveyed the same meaning to his mind.  Perhaps he felt more bitterly
+her sudden and stunning accusations, couched as they were in language so
+unqualified, because they fell upon his pride rather than his affection,
+and were not softened away by the thousand excuses and remembrances
+which a passionate love would have invented and recalled.  It was a
+deep, concentrated sense of injury and insult, that hardened and soured
+his whole nature--wounded vanity, wounded pride, and wounded honour.
+
+And the blow, too, came upon him at a time when he was most dissatisfied
+with all other prospects.  He was disgusted with the littleness of the
+agents and springs of political life--he had formed a weary contempt for
+the barrenness of literary reputation.  At thirty years of age he had
+necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early youth, and he had
+already broken up many of those later toys in business and ambition
+which afford the rattle and the hobby-borse to our maturer manhood.
+Always asking for something too refined and too exalted for human life,
+every new proof of unworthiness in men and things saddened or revolted a
+mind still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world as
+it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy
+practical and our genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be prodigal
+of the blossom.  Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the ordinary resources
+of mortified and disappointed men were not for Ernest Maltravers.
+Rigidly secluded in his country retirement, he consumed the days in
+moody wanderings; and in the evenings he turned to books with a spirit
+disdainful and fatigued.  So much had he already learned, that books
+taught him little that he did not already know.  And the biographies of
+authors, those ghost-like beings who seem to have had no life but in the
+shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts, dimmed the
+inspiration he might have caught from their pages.  Those slaves of the
+Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how little had they enjoyed, how
+little had they lived!  Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale
+destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin
+thoughts for the common crowd--and, their task performed in drudgery and
+in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their
+exhaustion.  Names had they been in life, and as names they lived for
+ever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial phantoms.  It pleased
+Maltravers at this time to turn a curious eye towards the obscure and
+half-extinct philosophies of the ancient world.  He compared the Stoics
+with the Epicureans--those Epicureans who had given their own version to
+the simple and abstemious utilitarianism of their master.  He asked
+which was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure--to bear all
+or to enjoy all; and, by a natural reaction which often happens to us in
+life, this man, hitherto so earnest, active-spirited, and resolved on
+great things, began to yearn for the drowsy pleasures of indolence.  The
+garden grew more tempting than the porch.  He seriously revolved the old
+alternative of the Grecian demi-god--might it not be wiser to abandon
+the grave pursuits to which he had been addicted, to dethrone the august
+but severe ideal in his heart, to cultivate the light loves and
+voluptuous trifles of the herd, and to plant the brief space of youth
+yet left to him with the myrtle and the rose?  As water flows over
+water, so new schemes rolled upon new--sweeping away every momentary
+impression, and leaving the surface facile equally to receive and to
+forget.  Such is the common state with men of imagination in those
+crises of life, when some great revolution of designs and hopes
+unsettles elements too susceptible of every changing wind.  And thus the
+weak are destroyed, while the strong relapse, after terrible but unknown
+convulsions, into that solemn harmony and order from which destiny and
+God draw their uses to mankind.
+
+It was from this irresolute contest between antagonist principles that
+Maltravers was aroused by the following letter from Florence Lascelles:
+
+
+"For three days and three sleepless nights I have debated with myself
+whether or not I ought to address you.  Oh, Ernest, were I what I was,
+in health, in pride, I might fear that, generous as you are, you would
+misconstrue my appeal; but that is now impossible.  Our union never can
+take place, and my hopes bound themselves to one sweet and melancholy
+hope, that you will remove from my last hours the cold and dark shadow
+of your resentment.  We have both been cruelly deceived and betrayed.
+Three days ago I discovered the perfidy that has been practised against
+us.  And then, ah! then, with all the weak human anguish of discovering
+it too late (/your curse is fulfilled/, Ernest!), I had at least one
+moment of proud, of exquisite rapture.  Ernest Maltravers, the hero of
+my dreams, stood pure and lofty as of old--a thing it was not unworthy
+to love, to mourn, to die for.  A letter in your handwriting had been
+shown to me, garbled and altered, as it seems--but I detected not the
+imposture--it was yourself, yourself alone, brought in false and
+horrible witness against yourself!  And could you think that any other
+evidence, the words, the oaths of others, would have convicted you in my
+eyes?  There you wronged me.  But I deserved it--I had bound myself to
+secrecy--the seal is taken from my lips in order to be set upon my tomb.
+Ernest, beloved Ernest--beloved till the last breath is extinct--till
+the last throb of this heart is stilled--write me one word of comfort
+and of pardon.  You will believe what I have imperfectly written, for
+you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults.  I am now
+comparatively happy--a word from you will, make me blest.  And Fate has,
+perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and
+querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the
+frame is brought low--and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and
+humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those faults
+which I once mistook for virtues--and feel that, had we been united, I,
+loving you ever, might not have constituted your happiness, and so have
+known the misery of losing your affection.  May He who formed you for
+glorious and yet all unaccomplished purposes strengthen you, when these
+eyes can no longer sparkle at your triumphs, or weep at your lightest
+sorrow.  You will go on in your broad and luminous career:--a few years,
+and my remembrance will have left but the vestige of a dream behind.
+But, but--I can write no more.  God bless you!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  "Oh, stop this headlong current of your goodness;
+   It comes too fast upon a feeble soul."
+               DRYDEN: /Sebastian and Doras/.
+
+THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit; Lord Saxingham had gone
+to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk side by side with Death:
+and Lady Florence Lascelles was alone.  It was a room adjoining her
+sleeping-apartment--a room in which, in the palmy days of the brilliant
+and wayward heiress, she had loved to display her fanciful and peculiar
+taste.  There had she been accustomed to muse, to write, to study--there
+had she first been dazzled by the novel glow of Ernest's undiurnal and
+stately thoughts--there had she first conceived the romance of girlhood,
+which had led her to confer with him, unknown--there had she first
+confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love--there had she gone
+through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion;--the doubt,
+the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate
+despondency, the agonised despair!  And there now, sadly and patiently,
+she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay.  And books and
+pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed by
+classic draperies--and all the delicate elegancies of womanly
+refinement--still invested the chamber with a grace as cheerful as if
+youth and beauty were to be the occupants for ever--and the dark and
+noisome vault were not the only lasting residence for the things of
+clay.
+
+Florence Lascelles was dying; but not indeed wholly of that common, if
+mystic malady, a broken heart.  Her health, always delicate, because
+always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, and feverish spirit, had
+been gradually and invisibly undermined, even before Ernest confessed
+his love.  In the singular lustre of those large-pupilled eyes--in the
+luxuriant transparency of that glorious bloom,--the experienced might
+long since have traced the seeds which cradled death.  In the night when
+her restless and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to
+forestall the communication of Lumley (whom she had sent to Maltravers,
+she scarce knew for what object, or with what hope), in that night she
+was already in a high state of fever.  The rain and the chill struck the
+growing disease within--her excitement gave it food and fire--delirium
+succeeded; and in that most fearful and fatal of all medical errors,
+which robs the frame, when it most needs strength, of the very principle
+of life, they had bled her into a temporary calm, and into permanent and
+incurable weakness.  Consumption seized its victim.  The physicians who
+attended her were the most renowned in London, and Lord Saxingham was
+firmly persuaded that there was no danger.  It was not in his nature to
+think that death would take so great a liberty with Lady Florence
+Lascelles, when there were so many poor people in the world whom there
+would be no impropriety in removing from it.  But Florence knew her
+danger, and her high spirit did not quail before it.  Yet, when
+Cesarini, stung beyond endurance by the horrors of his remorse, wrote
+and confessed all his own share of the fatal treason, though, faithful
+to his promise, he concealed that of his accomplice,--then, ah then, she
+did indeed repine at her doom, and long to look once more with the eyes
+of love and joy upon the face of the beautiful world.  But the illness
+of the body usually brings out a latent power and philosophy of the
+soul, which health never knows; and God has mercifully ordained it as
+the customary lot of nature, that in proportion as we decline into the
+grave, the sloping path is made smooth and easy to our feet; and every
+day, as the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the
+false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a
+wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.
+
+It was with a heavy heart that Lady Florence listened to the monotonous
+clicking of the clock that announced the departure of moments few, yet
+not precious, still spared to her.  Her face buried in her hands, she
+bent over the small table beside her sofa, and indulged her melancholy
+thoughts.  Bowed was the haughty crest, unnerved the elastic shape that
+had once seemed born for majesty and command--no friends were near, for
+Florence had never made friends.  Solitary had been her youth, and
+solitary were her dying hours.
+
+As she thus sat and mused, a sound of carriage wheels in the street
+below slightly shook the room--it ceased--the carriage stopped at the
+door.  Florence looked up.  "No, no, it cannot be," she muttered; yet,
+while she spoke, a faint flush passed over her sunken and faded cheek,
+and the bosom heaved beneath the robe, "a world too wide for its shrunk"
+proportions.  There was a silence, which to her seemed interminable, and
+she turned away with a deep sigh, and a chill sinking of the heart.
+
+At this time her woman entered with a meaning and flurried look.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my lady--but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Mr. Maltravers has called, and asked for your ladyship--so, my lady,
+Mr. Burton sent for me, and I said, my lady is too unwell to see any
+one; but Mr. Maltravers would not be denied; and he is waiting in my
+lord's library, and insisted on my coming up and 'nouncing him, my
+lady."
+
+Now Mrs. Shinfield's words were not euphonistic, nor her voice
+mellifluous; but never had eloquence seemed to Florence so effective.
+Youth, love, beauty, all rushed back upon her at once, brightening her
+eyes, her cheek, and filling up ruin with sudden and deceitful light.
+
+"Well," she said, after a pause, "let Mr. Maltravers come up."
+
+"Come up, my lady?  Bless me!--let me just 'range your hair--your
+ladyship is really in such dish-a-bill."
+
+"Best as it is, Shinfield--he will excuse all.--Go."
+
+Mrs. Shinfield shrugged her shoulders, and departed.  A few moments
+more--a step on the stairs, the creaking of the door,--and Maltravers
+and Florence were again alone.  He stood motionless on the threshold.
+She had involuntarily risen, and so they stood opposite to each other,
+and the lamp fell full upon her face.  Oh, Heaven! when did that sight
+cease to haunt the heart of Maltravers!  When shall that altered aspect
+not pass as a ghost before his eyes!--there it is, faithful and
+reproachful alike in solitude and in crowds--it is seen in the glare of
+noon--it passes dim and wan at night beneath the stars and the earth--it
+looked into his heart and left its likeness there for ever and for ever!
+Those cheeks, once so beautifully rounded, now sunken into lines and
+hollows--the livid darkness beneath the eyes--the whitened lip--the
+sharp, anxious, worn expression, which had replaced that glorious and
+beaming regard from which all the life of genius, all the sweet pride of
+womanhood had glowed forth, and in which not only the intelligence, but
+the eternity of the soul, seemed visibly wrought.
+
+There he stood, aghast and appalled.  At length a low groan broke from
+his lips--he rushed forward, sank on his knees beside her, and clasping
+both her hands, sobbed aloud as he covered them with kisses.  All the
+iron of his strong nature was broken down, and his emotions, long
+silenced, and now uncontrollable and resistless, were something terrible
+to behold!
+
+"Do not--do not weep so," murmured Lady Florence, frightened by his
+vehemence; "I am sadly changed, but the fault is mine--Ernest, it is
+mine; best, kindest, gentlest, how could I have been so mad!  And you
+forgive me?  I am yours again--a little while yours.  Ah, do not grieve
+while I am so blessed!"
+
+As she spoke, her tears--tears from a source how different from that
+whence broke the scorching and intolerable agony of his own! fell soft
+upon his bended head, and the hands that still convulsively strained
+hers.  Maltravers looked wildly up into her countenance, and shuddered
+as he saw her attempt to smile.  He rose abruptly, threw himself into a
+chair, and covered his face.  He was seeking by a violent effort to
+master himself, and it was only by the heaving of his chest, and now and
+then a gasp as for breath, that he betrayed the stormy struggle within.
+
+Florence gazed at him a moment in bitter, in almost selfish penitence.
+"And this was the man who seemed to me so callous to the softer
+sympathies--this was the heart I trampled upon--this the nature I
+distrusted!"
+
+She came near him, trembling and with feeble steps--she laid her hand
+upon his shoulder, and the fondness of love came over her, and she wound
+her arms around him.
+
+"It is our fate--it is my fate," said Maltravers at last, awaking as
+from a hideous dream, and in a hollow but calm voice--"we are the things
+of destiny, and the wheel has crushed us.  It is an awful state of being
+this human life!--What is wisdom--virtue--faith to men--piety to
+Heaven--all the nurture we bestow on ourselves--all our desire to win a
+loftier sphere, when we are thus the tools of the merest chance--the
+victims of the pettiest villainy; and our very existence--our very
+senses almost, at the mercy of every traitor and every fool!"
+
+There was something in Ernest's voice, as well as in his reflections,
+which appeared so unnaturally calm and deep that it startled Florence,
+with a fear more acute than his previous violence had done.  He rose,
+and muttering to himself, walked to and fro, as if insensible of her
+presence--in fact he was so.  At length he stopped short, and fixing his
+eyes upon Lady Florence, said in a whispered and thrilling tone:
+
+"Now, then, the name of our undoer?"
+
+"No, Ernest, no--never, unless you promise me to forego the purpose
+which I read in your eyes.  He has confessed--he is penitent--I have
+forgiven him--you will do so too!"
+
+"His name!" repeated Maltravers, and his face, before very flushed, was
+unnaturally pale.
+
+"Forgive him--promise me."
+
+"His name, I say,--his name?"
+
+"Is this kind?--you terrify me--you will kill me!" faltered out
+Florence, and she sank on the sofa exhausted: her nerves, now so
+weakened, were perfectly unstrung by his vehemence, and she wrung her
+hands and wept piteously.
+
+"You will not tell me his name?" said Maltravers, softly.  "Be it so.  I
+will ask no more.  I can discover it myself.  Fate the Avenger will
+reveal it."
+
+At the thought he grew more composed; and as Florence wept on, the
+unnatural concentration and fierceness of his mind again gave way, and,
+seating himself beside her, he uttered all that could soothe, and
+comfort, and console.  And Florence was soon soothed!  And there, while
+over their heads the grim skeleton was holding the funeral pall, they
+again exchanged their vows, and again, with feelings fonder than of old,
+spoke of love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+               "Erichtho, then,
+   Breathes her dire murmurs, which enforce him bear
+   Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror."--MARLOWE.
+
+WITH a heavy step Maltravers ascended the stairs of his lonely house
+that night, and heavily, with a suppressed groan, did he sink upon the
+first chair that proffered rest.
+
+It was intensely cold.  During his long interview with Lady Florence,
+his servant had taken the precaution to go to Seamore Place, and make
+some hasty preparations for the owner's return.  But the bedroom looked
+comfortless and bare, the curtains were taken down, the carpets were
+taken up (a single man's housekeeper is wonderfully provident in these
+matters; the moment his back is turned, she bustles, she displaces, she
+exults; "things can be put a little to rights!").  Even the fire would
+not burn clear, but gleamed sullen and fitful from the smothering fuel.
+It was a large chamber, and the lights imperfectly filled it.  On the
+table lay parliamentary papers, and pamphlets, and bills and
+presentation-books from younger authors--evidences of the teeming
+business of that restless machine the world.  But of all this Maltravers
+was not sensible: the winter frost numbed not his feverish veins.  His
+servant, who loved him, as all who saw much of Maltravers did, fidgeted
+anxiously about the room, and plied the sullen fire, and laid out the
+comfortable dressing-robe, and placed wine on the table, and asked
+questions which were not answered, and pressed service which was not
+heeded.  The little wheels of life go on, even when the great wheel is
+paralysed or broken.  Maltravers was, if I may so express it, in a kind
+of mental trance.  His emotions had left him thoroughly exhausted.  He
+felt that torpor which succeeds and is again the precursor of great woe.
+At length he was alone, and the solitude half unconsciously restored him
+to the sense of his heavy misery.  For it may be observed, that when
+misfortune has stricken us home, the presence of any one seems to
+interfere between the memory and the heart.  Withdraw the intruder, and
+the lifted hammer falls at once upon the anvil!  He rose as the door
+closed on his attendant--rose with a start, and pushed the hat from his
+gathered brows.  He walked for some moments to and fro, and the air of
+the room, freezing as it was, oppressed him.
+
+There are times when the arrow quivers within us--in which all space
+seems too confined.  Like the wounded hart, we could fly on for ever;
+there is a vague desire of escape--a yearning, almost insane, to get out
+from our own selves: the soul struggles to flee away, and take the wings
+of the morning.
+
+Impatiently, at last, did Maltravers throw open his window; it
+communicated with a balcony, built out to command the wide view which,
+from a certain height, that part of the park affords.  He stepped into
+the balcony and bared his breast to the keen air.  The uncomfortable and
+icy heavens looked down upon the hoar-rime that gathered over the grass,
+and the ghostly boughs of the deathlike trees.  All things in the world
+without brought the thought of the grave, and the pause of being, and
+the withering up of beauty, closer and closer to his soul.  In the
+palpable and griping winter, death itself seemed to wind around him its
+skeleton and joyless arms.  And as thus he stood, and, wearied with
+contending against, passively yielded to, the bitter passions that wrung
+and gnawed his heart,--he heard not a sound at the door--nor the
+footsteps on the stairs--nor knew he that a visitor was in his
+room--till he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and turning round, he
+beheld the white and livid countenance of Castruccio Cesarini.
+
+"It is a dreary night and a solemn hour, Maltravers," said the Italian,
+with a distorted smile--"a fitting night and time for my interview with
+you."
+
+"Away!" said Maltravers, in an impatient tone.  "I am not at leisure for
+these mock heroics."
+
+"Ay, but you shall hear me to the end.  I have watched your arrival--I
+have counted the hours in which you remained with her--I have followed
+you home.  If you have human passions, humanity itself must be dried up
+within you, and the wild beast in his cavern is not more fearful to
+encounter.  Thus, then, I seek and brave you.  Be still.  Has Florence
+revealed to you the name of him who belied you, and who betrayed herself
+to the death?"
+
+"Ha!" said Maltravers, growing very pale, and fixing his eyes on
+Cesarini, "you are not the man--my suspicions lighted elsewhere."
+
+"I am the man.  Do thy worst."
+
+Scarce were the words uttered, when, with a fierce cry, Maltravers threw
+himself on the Italian;--he tore him from his footing--he grasped him in
+his arms as a child--he literally whirled him around and on high; and in
+that maddening paroxysm, it was, perhaps, but the balance of a feather,
+in the conflicting elements of revenge and reason, which withheld
+Maltravers from hurling the criminal from the fearful height on which
+they stood.  The temptation passed--Cesarini leaned safe, unharmed, but
+half senseless with mingled rage and fear, against the wall.
+
+He was alone--Maltravers had left him--had fled from himself--fled into
+the chamber--fled for refuge from human passions to the wing of the
+All-Seeing and All-Present.  "Father," he groaned, sinking on his knees,
+"support me, save me: without Thee I am lost."
+
+Slowly Cesarini recovered himself, and re-entered the apartment.  A
+string in his brain was already loosened, and, sullen and ferocious, he
+returned again to goad the lion that had spared him.  Maltravers had
+already risen from his brief prayer.  With locked and rigid countenance,
+with arms folded on his breast, he stood confronting the Italian, who
+advanced towards him with a menacing brow and arm, but halted
+involuntarily at the sight of that commanding aspect.
+
+"Well, then," said Maltravers at last, with a tone preternaturally calm
+and low, "you then are the man.  Speak on--what arts did you employ?"
+
+"Your own letter.  When, many months ago, I wrote to tell you of the
+hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask your opinion of her I loved,
+how did you answer me?  With doubts, with depreciation, with covert and
+polished scorn, of the very woman whom, with a deliberate treachery, you
+afterwards wrested from my worshipping and adoring love.  That letter I
+garbled.  I made the doubts you expressed of my happiness seem doubts of
+your own.  I changed the dates--I made the letter itself appear written,
+not on your first acquaintance with her, but subsequent to your plighted
+and accepted vows.  Your own handwriting convicted you of mean
+suspicions and of sordid motives.  These were my arts."
+
+"They were most noble.  Do you abide by them--or repent?"
+
+"For what I have done to /thee/ I have no repentance.  Nay, I regard
+thee still as the aggressor.  Thou hast robbed me of her who was all the
+world to me--and, be thine excuses what they may, I hate thee with a
+hate that cannot slumber--that abjures the abject name of remorse!  I
+exult in the very agonies thou endurest.  But for her--the stricken--the
+dying!  O God, O God!  The blow falls upon mine own head!"
+
+"Dying!" said Maltravers, slowly and with a shudder.  "No, no--not
+dying--or what art thou?  Her murderer!  And what must I be?  Her
+avenger!"
+
+Overpowered with his own passions, Cesarini sank down and covered his
+face with his clasped hands.  Maltravers stalked gloomily to and fro the
+apartment.  There was silence for some moments.
+
+At length Maltravers paused opposite Cesarini and thus addressed him:
+
+"You have come hither not so much to confess the basest crime of which
+man can be guilty, as to gloat over my anguish and to brave me to
+revenge my wrongs.  Go, man, go--for the present you are safe.  While
+she lives, my life is not mine to hazard--if she recover, I can pity you
+and forgive.  To me your offence, foul though it be, sinks below
+contempt itself.  It is the consequences of that crime as they relate
+to--to--that noble and suffering woman, which can alone raise the
+despicable into the tragic and make your life a worthy and a necessary
+offering--not to revenge, but justice:--life for life--victim for
+victim!  'Tis the old law--'tis a righteous one."
+
+"You shall not, with your accursed coldness, thus dispose of me as you
+will, and arrogate the option to smite or save!  No," continued
+Cesarini, stamping his foot--"no; far from seeking forbearance at your
+hands--I dare and defy you!  You think I have injured you--I, on the
+other hand, consider that the wrong has come from yourself.  But for
+you, she might have loved me--have been mine.  Let that pass.  But for
+you, at least, it is certain that I should neither have sullied my soul
+with a vile sin, nor brought the brightest of human beings to the grave.
+If she dies, the murder may be mine, but you were the cause--the devil
+that tempted to the offence.  I defy and spit upon you--I have no
+softness left in me--my veins are fire--my heart thirsts for blood.
+You--you--have still the privilege to see--to bless--to tend her:--and
+I--I, who loved her so--who could have kissed the earth she trod
+on--I--well, well, no matter--I hate you--I insult you--I call you
+villain and dastard--I throw myself on the laws of honour, and I demand
+that conflict you defer or deny!"
+
+"Home, doter--home--fall on thy knees, and pray to Heaven for
+pardon--make up thy dread account--repine not at the days yet thine to
+wash the black spot from thy soul.  For, while I speak, I foresee too
+well that her days are numbered, and with her thread of life is entwined
+thine own.  Within twelve hours from her last moment, we shall meet
+again: but now I am as ice and stone,--thou canst not move me.  Her
+closing life shall not be darkened by the aspect of blood--by the
+thought of the sacrifice it demands.  Begone, or menials shall cast thee
+from my door: those lips are too base to breathe the same air as honest
+men.  Begone, I say, begone!"
+
+Though scarce a muscle moved in the lofty countenance of
+Maltravers--though no frown darkened the majestic brow--though no fire
+broke from the steadfast and scornful eye--there was a kingly authority
+in the aspect, in the extended arm, the stately crest, and a power in
+the swell of the stern voice, which awed and quelled the unhappy being
+whose own passions exhausted and unmanned him.  He strove to fling back
+scorn to scorn, but his lips trembled, and his voice died in hollow
+murmurs within his breast.  Maltravers regarded him with a crushing and
+intense disdain.  The Italian with shame and wrath wrestled against
+himself, but in vain: the cold eye that was fixed upon him was as a
+spell, which the fiend within him could not rebel against or resist.
+Mechanically he moved to the door,--then turning round, he shook his
+clenched hand at Maltravers, and, with a wild, maniacal laugh, rushed
+from the apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  "On some fond breast the parting soul relies."--GRAY.
+
+NOT a day passed in which Maltravers was absent from the side of
+Florence.  He came early, he went late.  He subsided into his former
+character of an accepted suitor, without a word of explanation with Lord
+Saxingham.  That task was left to Florence.  She doubtless performed it
+well, for his lordship seemed satisfied though grave, and, almost for
+the first time in his life, sad.  Maltravers never reverted to the cause
+of their unhappy dissension.  Nor from that night did he once give way
+to whatever might be his more agonised and fierce emotions--he never
+affected to reproach himself--he never bewailed with a vain despair
+their approaching separation.  Whatever it cost him, he stood collected
+and stoical in the intense power of his self control.  He had but one
+object, one desire, one hope--to save the last hours of Florence
+Lascelles from every pang--to brighten and smooth the passage across the
+Solemn Bridge.  His forethought, his presence of mind, his care, his
+tenderness, never forsook him for an instant: they went beyond the
+attributes of men, they went into all the fine, the indescribable
+minutiae by which woman makes herself, "in pain and anguish," the
+"ministering angel."  It was as if he had nerved and braced his whole
+nature to one duty--as if that duty were more felt than affection
+itself--as if he were resolved that Florence should not remember that
+/she had no mother/!
+
+And, oh, then, how Florence loved him! how far more luxurious, in its
+grateful and clinging fondness, was that love, than the wild and jealous
+fire of their earlier connection!  Her own character, as is often the
+case in lingering illness, became incalculably more gentle and softened
+down, as the shadows closed around it.  She loved to make him read and
+talk to her--and her ancient poetry of thought now grew mellowed, as it
+were, into religion, which is indeed poetry with a stronger wing. . . .
+There was a world beyond the grave--there was life out of the chrysalis
+sleep of death--they would yet be united.  And Maltravers, who was a
+solemn and intense believer in the GREAT HOPE, did not neglect the
+purest and highest of all the fountains of solace.
+
+Often in that quiet room, in that gorgeous mansion, which had been the
+scene of all vain or worldly schemes--of flirtations and feastings, and
+political meetings and cabinet dinners, and all the bubbles of the
+passing wave--often there did these persons, whose position to each
+other had been so suddenly and so strangely changed--converse on those
+matters--daring and divine--which "make the bridal of the earth and
+sky."
+
+"How fortunate am I," said Florence, one day, "that my choice fell on
+one who thinks as you do!  How your words elevate and exalt me!--yet
+once I never dreamt of asking your creed on these questions.  It is in
+sorrow or sickness that we learn why Faith was given as a soother to
+man--Faith, which is Hope with a holier name--hope that knows neither
+deceit nor death.  Ah, how wisely do you speak of the /philosophy/ of
+belief!  It is, indeed, the telescope through which the stars grow large
+upon our gaze.  And to you, Ernest, my beloved--comprehended and known
+at last--to you I leave, when I am gone, that monitor--that friend; you
+will know yourself what you teach to me.  And when you look not on the
+heaven alone but in all space--on all the illimitable creation, you will
+know that I am there!  For the home of a spirit is wherever spreads the
+Universal Presence of God.  And to what numerous stages of being, what
+paths, what duties, what active and glorious tasks in other worlds may
+we not be reserved--perhaps to know and share them together, and mount
+age after age higher in the scale of being.  For surely in heaven there
+is no pause or torpor--we do not lie down in calm and unimprovable
+repose.  Movement and progress will remain the law and condition of
+existence.  And there will be efforts and duties for us above as there
+have been below."
+
+It was in this theory, which Maltravers shared, that the character of
+Florence, her overflowing life and activity of thought--her aspirations,
+her ambition, were still displayed.  It was not so much to the calm and
+rest of the grave that she extended her unreluctant gaze, as to the
+light and glory of a renewed and progressive existence.
+
+It was while thus they sat, the low voice of Ernest, tranquil yet half
+trembling with the emotions he sought to restrain--sometimes sobering,
+sometimes yet more elevating, the thoughts of Florence, that Lord
+Vargrave was announced, and Lumley Ferrers, who had now succeeded to
+that title, entered the room.  It was the first time that Florence had
+seen him since the death of his uncle--the first time Maltravers
+had seen him since the evening so fatal to Florence.  Both
+started--Maltravers rose and walked to the window.  Lord Vargrave took
+the hand of his cousin and pressed it to his lips in silence, while his
+looks betokened feelings that for once were genuine.
+
+"You see, Lumley, I am resigned," said Florence, with a sweet smile.
+"I am resigned and happy."
+
+Lumley glanced at Maltravers, and met a cold, scrutinising, piercing
+eye, from which he shrank with some confusion.  He recovered himself in
+an instant.
+
+"I am rejoiced, my cousin, I /am/ rejoiced," said he, very earnestly,
+"to see Maltravers here again.  Let us now hope the best."
+
+Maltravers walked deliberately up to Lumley.  "Will you take my hand
+/now/, too?" said he, with deep meaning in his tone.
+
+"More willingly than ever," said Lumley; and he did not shrink as he
+said it.
+
+"I am satisfied," replied Maltravers, after a pause, and in a voice that
+expressed more than his words.
+
+There is in some natures so great a hoard of generosity, that it often
+dulls their acuteness.  Maltravers could not believe that frankness
+could be wholly a mask--it was an hypocrisy he knew not of.  He himself
+was not incapable, had circumstances so urged him, of great crimes; nay,
+the design of one crime lay at that moment deadly and dark within his
+heart, for he had some passions which in so resolute a character could
+produce, should the wind waken them into storm, dire and terrible
+effects.  Even at the age of thirty, it was yet uncertain whether Ernest
+Maltravers might become an exemplary or an evil man.  But he could
+sooner have strangled a foe than taken the hand of a man whom he had
+once betrayed.
+
+"I love to think you friends," said Florence, gazing at them
+affectionately, "and to you, at least, Lumley, such friendship should be
+a blessing.  I always loved you much and dearly, Lumley--loved you as a
+brother, though our characters often jarred."
+
+Lumley winced.  "For Heaven's sake," he cried, "do not speak thus
+tenderly to me--I cannot bear it, and look on you and think--"
+
+"That I am dying.  Kind words become us best when our words are
+approaching to the last.  But enough of this--I grieved for your loss."
+
+"My poor uncle!" said Lumley, eagerly changing the conversation--"the
+shock was sudden; and melancholy duties have absorbed me so till this
+day, that I could not come even to you.  It soothed me, however, to
+learn, in answer to my daily inquiries, that Ernest was here.  For my
+part," he added with a faint smile, "I have had duties as well as
+honours devolved on me.  I am left guardian to an heiress, and betrothed
+to a child."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Why, my poor uncle was so fondly attached to his wife's daughter, that
+he has left her the bulk of his property: a very small estate--not L2000
+a year--goes with the title (a new title, too, which requires twice as
+much to carry it off and make its pinchbeck pass for gold).  In order,
+however, to serve a double purpose, secure to his /protegee/ his own
+beloved peerage, and atone to his nephew for the loss of wealth--he has
+left it a last request, that I should marry the young lady over whom I
+am appointed guardian, when she is eighteen--alas!  I shall then be at
+the other side of forty!  If she does not take to so mature a
+bridegroom, she loses thirty--only thirty of the L200,000 settled upon
+her, which goes to me as a sugar-plum after the nauseous draught of the
+young lady's 'No.'  Now, you know all.  His widow, really an exemplary
+young woman, has a jointure of L1500 a year, and the villa.  It is not
+much, but she is contented."
+
+The lightness of the new peer's tone revolted Maltravers, and he turned
+impatiently away.  But Lord Vargrave, resolving not to suffer the
+conversation to glide back to sorrowful subjects, which he always hated,
+turned round to Ernest, and said, "Well, my dear Ernest, I see by the
+papers that you are to have N------'s late appointment--it is a very
+rising office.  I congratulate you."
+
+"I have refused," said Maltravers, drily.
+
+"Bless me!--indeed!--why?"
+
+Ernest bit his lip, and frowned; but his glance wandering unconsciously
+at Florence, Lumley thought he detected the true reply to his question,
+and became mute.
+
+The conversation was afterwards embarrassed and broken up; Lumley went
+away as soon as he could, and Lady Florence that night had a severe fit,
+and could not leave her bed the next day.  That confinement she had
+struggled against to the last; and now, day by day, it grew more
+frequent and inevitable.  The steps of Death became accelerated.  And
+Lord Saxingham, wakened at last to the mournful truth, took his place by
+his daughter's side, and forgot that he was a cabinet minister.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  "Away, my friends, why take such pains to know
+   What some brave marble soon in church shall show?"
+                    CRABBE.
+
+IT may seem strange, but Maltravers had never loved Lady Florence as he
+did now.  Was it the perversity of human nature that makes the things of
+mortality dearer to us in proportion as they fade from our hopes, like
+birds whose hues are only unfolded when they take wing and vanish amidst
+the skies; or was it that he had ever doted more on loveliness of mind
+than that of form, and the first bloomed out the more, the more the last
+decayed?  A thing to protect, to soothe, to shelter--oh, how dear it is
+to the pride of man!  The haughty woman who can stand alone and requires
+no leaning-place in our heart, loses the spell of her sex.
+
+I pass over those stages of decline gratuitously painful to record; and
+which in this case mine cannot be the cold and technical hand to trace.
+At length came that time when physicians could define within a few days
+the final hour of release.  And latterly the mocking pruderies of rank
+had been laid aside, and Maltravers had, for some hours at least in the
+day, taken his watch beside the couch to which the admired and brilliant
+Florence Lascelles was now almost constantly reduced.  But her high and
+heroic spirit was with her to the last.  To the last she could endure
+love and hope.  One day when Maltravers left his post, she besought him,
+with more solemnity than usual, to return that evening.  She fixed the
+precise hour, and she sighed heavily when he departed.  Maltravers
+paused in the hall to speak to the physician, who was just quitting Lord
+Saxingham's library.  Ernest spoke to him for some moments calmly, and
+when he heard the fiat, he betrayed no other emotion than a slight
+quiver of the lip!  "I must not weep for her yet," he muttered, as he
+turned from the door.  He went thence to the house of a gentleman of his
+own age, with whom he had formed that kind of acquaintance which never
+amounts to familiar friendship, but rests upon mutual respect, and is
+often more ready than professed friendship itself to confer mutual
+service.  Colonel Danvers was a man who usually sat next to Maltravers
+in parliament; they voted together, and thought alike on principles both
+of politics and honour: they would have lent thousands to each other
+without bond or memorandum; and neither ever wanted a warm and indignant
+advocate when he was abused behind his back in the presence of the
+other.  Yet their tastes and ordinary habits were not congenial; and
+when they met in the streets, they never said, as they would to
+companions they esteemed less, "Let us spend the day together!"  Such
+forms of acquaintance are not uncommon among honourable men who have
+already formed habits and pursuits of their own, which they cannot
+surrender even to friendship.  Colonel Danvers was not at home--they
+believed he was at his club, of which Ernest also was a member.  Thither
+Maltravers bent his way.  On arriving, he found that Danvers had been at
+the club an hour ago, and left word that he should shortly return.
+Maltravers entered and quietly sat down.  The room was full of its daily
+loungers; but he did not shrink from, he did not even heed, the crowd.
+He felt not the desire of solitude--there was solitude enough within
+him.  Several distinguished public men were there, grouped around the
+fire, and many of the hangers-on and satellites of political life; they
+were talking with eagerness and animation, for it was a season of great
+party conflict.  Strange as it may seem, though Maltravers was then
+scarcely sensible of their conversation, it all came back vividly and
+faithfully on him afterwards, in the first hours of reflection on his
+own future plans, and served to deepen and consolidate his disgust of
+the world.  They were discussing the character of a great statesman
+whom, warmed but by the loftiest and purest motives, they were unable to
+understand.  Their gross suspicions, their coarse jealousies, their
+calculations of patriotism by place, all that strips the varnish from
+the face of that fair harlot--Political Ambition--sank like caustic into
+his spirit.  A gentleman seeing him sit silent, with his hat over his
+moody brows, civilly extended to him the paper he was reading.
+
+"It is the second edition; you will find the last French express."
+
+"Thank yon," said Maltravers; and the civil man started as he heard the
+brief answer; there was something so inexpressibly prostrate and
+broken-spirited in the voice that uttered it.
+
+Maltravers's eyes fell mechanically on the columns, and caught his own
+name.  That work which, in the fair retirement of Temple Grove it had so
+pleased him to compose--in every page and every thought of which
+Florence had been consulted--which was so inseparably associated with
+her image, and glorified by the light of her kindred genius--was just
+published.  It had been completed long since; but the publisher had, for
+some excellent reason of the craft, hitherto delayed its appearance.
+Maltravers knew nothing of its publication; he had meant, after his
+return to town, to have sent to forbid its appearance; but his thoughts
+of late had crushed everything else out of his memory--he had forgotten
+its existence.  And now, in all the pomp and parade of authorship, it
+was sent into the world!  /Now/, /now/, when it was like an indecent
+mockery of the Bed of Death--a sacrilege, an impiety!  There is a
+terrible disconnection between the author and the man---the author's
+life and the man's life--the eras of visible triumph may be those of the
+most intolerable, though unrevealed and unconjectured anguish.  The book
+that delighted us to compose may first appear in the hour when all
+things under the sun are joyless.  This had been Ernest Maltravers's
+most favoured work.  It had been conceived in a happy hour of great
+ambition--it had been executed with that desire of truth, which, in the
+mind of genius, becomes ART.  How little in the solitary hours stolen
+from sleep had he thought of self, and that labourer's hire called
+"fame!" how had he dreamt that he was promulgating secrets to make his
+kind better, and wiser, and truer to the great aims of life!  How had
+Florence, and Florence alone, understood the beatings of his heart in
+every page!  /And now/!--it so chanced that the work was reviewed in the
+paper he read--it was not only a hostile criticism, it was a personally
+abusive diatribe, a virulent invective.  All the motives that can darken
+or defile were ascribed to him.  All the mean spite of some mean mind
+was sputtered forth.  Had the writer known the awful blow that awaited
+Maltravers at that time, it is not in man's nature but that he would
+have shrunk from this petty gall upon the wrung withers; but, as I have
+said, there is a terrible disconnection between the author and the man.
+The first is always at our mercy--of the last we know nothing.  At such
+an hour Maltravers could feel none of the contempt that proud--none of
+the wrath that vain, minds feel at these stings.  He could feel nothing
+but an undefined abhorrence of the world, and of the aims and objects he
+had pursued so long.  Yet that even he did not then feel.  He was in a
+dream; but as men remember dreams, so when he awoke did he loathe his
+own former aspirations, and sicken at their base rewards.  It was the
+first time since his first year of inexperienced authorship that abuse
+had had the power even to vex him for a moment.  But here, when the cup
+was already full, was the drop that overflowed.  The great column of his
+past world was gone, and all else seemed crumbling away.
+
+At length Colonel Danvers entered.  Maltravers drew him aside, and they
+left the club.
+
+"Danvers," said the latter, "the time in which I told you I should need
+your services is near at hand; let me see you, if possible, to-night."
+
+"Certainly--I shall be, at the House till eleven.  After that hour you
+will find me at home."
+
+"I thank you."
+
+"Cannot this matter be arranged amicably?"
+
+"No, it is a quarrel of life and death."
+
+"Yet the world is really growing too enlightened for these old mimicries
+of single combat."
+
+"There are some cases in which human nature and its deep wrongs will be
+ever stronger than the world and its philosophy.  Duels and wars belong
+to the same principle; both are sinful on light grounds and poor
+pretexts.  But it is not sinful for a soldier to defend his country from
+invasion, nor for man, with a man's heart, to vindicate truth and honour
+with his life.  The robber that asks me for money I am allowed to shoot.
+Is the robber that tears from me treasures never to be replaced, to go
+free?  These are the inconsistencies of a pseudo-ethics, which, as long
+as we are made of flesh and blood, we can never subscribe to."
+
+"Yet the ancients," said Danvers, with a smile, "were as passionate as
+ourselves, and they dispensed with duels."
+
+"Yes, because they resorted to assassination!" answered Maltravers, with
+a gloomy frown.  "As in revolutions all law is suspended, so are there
+stormy events and mighty injuries in life which are as revolutions to
+individuals.  Enough of this--it is no time to argue like the schoolmen.
+When we meet you shall know all, and you will judge like me.  Good day!"
+
+"What, are you going already?  Maltravers, you look ill, your hand is
+feverish--you should take advice."
+
+Maltravers smiled--but the smile was not like his own--shook his head,
+and strode rapidly away.
+
+Three of the London clocks, one after the other, had told the hour of
+nine, as a tall and commanding figure passed up the street towards
+Saxingham House.  Five doors before you reach that mansion there is a
+crossing, and at this spot stood a young man, in whose face youth itself
+looked sapless and blasted.  It was then March;--the third of March; the
+weather was unusually severe and biting, even for that angry month.
+There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white and dreary in
+various ridges along the street.  But the wind was not still in the keen
+but quiet sharpness of frost; on the contrary, it howled almost like a
+hurricane through the desolate thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered
+unsteadily in the turbulent gusts.  Perhaps it was the blasts which
+increased the haggardness of aspect in the young man I have mentioned.
+His hair, which was much longer than is commonly worn, was tossed wildly
+from cheeks preternaturally shrunken, hollow, and livid: and the frail,
+thin form seemed scarcely able to support itself against the rush of the
+winds.
+
+As the tall figure, which, in its masculine stature and proportions, and
+a peculiar and nameless grandeur of bearing, strongly contrasted that of
+the younger man, now came to the spot where the streets met, it paused
+abruptly.
+
+"You are here once more, Castruccio Cesarini; it is well!" said the low
+but ringing voice of Ernest Maltravers.  "This, I believe, will not be
+our last interview to-night."
+
+"I ask you, sir," said Cesarini, in a tone in which pride struggled with
+emotion--"I ask you to tell me how she is; whether you know--I cannot
+speak--"
+
+"Your work is nearly done," answered Maltravers.  "A few hours more, and
+your victim, for she is yours, will bear her tale to the Great Judgment
+Seat.  Murderer as you are, tremble, for your own hour approaches!"
+
+"She dies and I cannot see her! and you are permitted that last glimpse
+of human perfectness; you who never loved her as I did; you--hated and
+detested! you--"
+
+Cesarini paused, and his voice died away, choked in his own convulsive
+gaspings for breath.
+
+Maltravers looked at him from the height of his erect and lofty form,
+with a merciless eye; for in this one quarter, Maltravers had shut out
+pity from his soul.
+
+"Weak criminal!" said he, "hear me.  You received at my hands
+forbearance, friendship, fostering and anxious care.  When your own
+follies plunged you into penury, mine was the unseen hand that plucked
+you from famine, or the prison.  I strove to redeem, and save, and raise
+you, and endow your miserable spirit with the thirst and the power of
+honour and independence.  The agent of that wish was Florence Lascelles;
+you repaid us well! a base and fraudulent forgery, attaching meanness to
+me, fraught with agony and death to her.  Your conscience at last smote
+you; you revealed to her your crime--one spark of manhood made you
+reveal it also to myself.  Fresh as I was in that moment from the
+contemplations of the ruin you had made, I curbed the impulse that would
+have crushed the life from your bosom.  I told you to live on while life
+was left to her.  If she recovered, I could forgive; if she died, I must
+avenge.  We entered into that solemn compact, and in a few hours the
+bond will need the seal: it is the blood of one of us.  Castruccio
+Cesarini, there is justice in Heaven. Deceive yourself not; you will
+fall by my hand.  When the hour comes, you will hear from me.  Let me
+pass--I have no more now to say."
+
+Every syllable of this speech was uttered with that thrilling
+distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in the
+voice.  But Cesarini did not appear to understand its import.  He seized
+Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face with a wild and menacing
+glare.
+
+"Did you tell me she was dying?" he said.  "I ask you that question: why
+do you not answer me?  Oh, by the way, you threaten me with your
+vengeance.  Know you not that I long to meet you front to front, and to
+the death?  Did I not tell you so--did I not try to move your slow
+blood--to insult you into a conflict in which I should have gloried?
+Yet then you were marble."
+
+"Because /my/ wrong I could forgive, and /hers/--there was then a hope
+that hers might not need the atonement.  Away!"
+
+Maltravers shook the hold of the Italian from his arm, and passed on.  A
+wild, sharp yell of despair rang after him, and echoed in his ear as he
+strode the long, dim, solitary stairs that led to the death-bed of
+Florence Lascelles.
+
+Maltravers entered the room adjoining that which contained the
+sufferer--the same room, still gay and cheerful, in which had been his
+first interview with Florence since their reconciliation.
+
+Here he found the physician dozing in a /fauteuil/.  Lady Florence had
+fallen asleep during the last two or three hours.  Lord Saxingham was in
+his own apartment, deeply and noisily affected; for it was not thought
+that Florence could survive the night.
+
+Maltravers sat himself quietly down.  Before him, on a table, lay
+several manuscript books, gaily and gorgeously bound; he mechanically
+opened them.  Florence's fair, noble Italian characters met his eye in
+every page.  Her rich and active mind, her love for poetry, her thirst
+for knowledge, her indulgence of deep thought, spoke from those pages
+like the ghosts of herself.  Often, underscored with the marks of her
+approbation, he chanced upon extracts from his own works, sometimes upon
+reflections by the writer herself, not inferior in truth and depth to
+his own; snatches of wild verse never completed, but of a power and
+energy beyond the delicate grace of lady-poets; brief, vigorous
+criticisms on books, above the common holiday studies of the sex;
+indignant and sarcastic aphorisms on the real world, with high and sad
+bursts of feeling upon the ideal one; all chequering and enriching the
+various volumes, told of the rare gifts with which this singular girl
+was endowed--a herbal, as it were, of withered blossoms that might have
+borne Hesperian fruits.  And sometimes in these outpourings of the full
+mind and laden heart were allusions to himself, so tender and so
+touching--the pencilled outline of his features, traced by memory in a
+thousand aspects--the reference to former interviews and
+conversations--the dates and hours marked with a woman's minute and
+treasuring care!--all these tokens of genius and of love spoke to him
+with a voice that said, "And this creature is lost to you, forever: you
+never appreciated her till the time for her departure was irrevocably
+fixed!"
+
+Maltravers uttered a deep groan; all the past rushed over him.  Her
+romantic passion for one yet unknown--her interest in his glory--her
+zeal for his life of life, his spotless and haughty name.  It was as if
+with her, Fame and Ambition were dying also, and henceforth nothing but
+common clay and sordid motives were to be left on earth.
+
+How sudden--how awfully sudden had been the blow!  True, there had been
+an absence of some months in which the change had operated.  But absence
+is a blank, a nonentity.  He had left her in apparent health, in the
+time of prosperity and pride.  He saw her again--stricken down in body
+and temper--chastened--humbled--dying.  And this being, so bright and
+lofty, how had she loved him!  Never had he been so loved, except in
+that morning dream, haunted by the vision of the lost and dim-remembered
+Alice.  Never on earth could he be so loved again. The air and aspect of
+the whole chamber grew to him painful and oppressive.  It was full of
+her--the owner!  There the harp, which so well became her muse-like form
+that it was associated with her like a part of herself!  There the
+pictures, fresh and glowing from her hand,-the grace--the harmony--the
+classic and simple taste everywhere displayed.
+
+Rousseau has left to us an immortal portrait of the lover waiting for
+the first embraces of his mistress.  But to wait with a pulse as
+feverish, a brain as dizzy, for her last look--to await the moment of
+despair, not rapture--to feel the slow and dull time as palpable a load
+upon the heart, yet to shrink from your own impatience, and wish that
+the agony of suspense might endure for ever--this, oh, this is a picture
+of intense passion--of flesh and blood reality--of the rare and solemn
+epochs of our mysterious life--which had been worthier the genius of
+that "Apostle of Affliction"!
+
+At length the door opened; the favourite attendant of Florence looked
+in.
+
+"Is Mr. Maltravers there?  Oh, sir, my lady is awake and would see you."
+
+Maltravers rose, but his feet were glued to the ground, his sinking
+heart stood still--it was a mortal terror that possessed him.  With a
+deep sigh he shook off the numbing spell, and passed to the bedside of
+Florence.
+
+She sat up, propped by pillows, and as he sank beside her, and clasped
+her wan, transparent hand, she looked at him with a smile of pitying
+love.
+
+"You have been very, very kind to me," she said, after a pause, and with
+a voice which had altered even since the last time he heard it.  "You
+have made that part of life from which human nature shrinks with dread,
+the happiest and the brightest of all my short and vain existence.  My
+own clear Ernest--Heaven reward you!"
+
+A few grateful tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell on the hand
+which she bent her lips to kiss.
+
+"It was not here--nor amidst the streets and the noisy abodes of
+anxious, worldly men--nor was it in this harsh and dreary season of the
+year, that I could have wished to look my last on earth.  Could I have
+seen the face of Nature--could I have watched once more with the summer
+sun amidst those gentle scenes we loved so well, Death would have had no
+difference from sleep.  But what matters it?  With you there are summer
+and Nature everywhere!"
+
+Maltravers raised his face, and their eyes met in silence--it was a
+long, fixed gaze, which spoke more than all words could.  Her head
+dropped on his shoulder, and there it lay, passive and motionless, for
+some moments.  A soft step glided into the room--it was the unhappy
+father's.  He came to the other side of his daughter, and sobbed
+convulsively.
+
+She then raised herself, and even in the shades of death, a faint blush
+passed over her cheek.
+
+"My good dear father, what comfort will it give you hereafter to think
+how fondly you spoiled your Florence!"
+
+Lord Saxingham could not answer: he clasped her in his arms and wept
+over her.  Then he broke away--looked on her with a shudder--
+
+"O God!" he cried, "she is dead--she is dead!"
+
+Maltravers started.  The physician kindly approached, and, taking Lord
+Saxingham's hand, led him from the room--he went mute and obedient like
+a child.
+
+But the struggle was not yet past.  Florence once more opened her eyes,
+and Maltravers uttered a cry of joy.  But along those eyes the film was
+darkening rapidly, as still through the mist and shadow they sought the
+beloved countenance which hung over her, as if to breathe life into
+waning life.  Twice her lips moved, but her voice failed her; she shook
+her head sadly.
+
+Maltravers hastily held to her mouth a cordial which lay ready on the
+table near her, but scarce had it moistened her lips, when her whole
+frame grew heavier and heavier, in his clasp.  Her head once more sank
+upon his bosom--she thrice gasped wildly for breath--and at length,
+raising her hand on high, life struggled into its expiring ray.
+
+"/There/--above!--Ernest--that name--Ernest!"
+
+Yes, that name was the last she uttered; she was evidently conscious of
+that thought, for a smile, as her voice again faltered--a smile sweet
+and serene--that smile never seen but on the faces of the dying and the
+dead--borrowed from a light that is not of this world--settled slowly on
+her brow, her lips, her whole countenance; still she breathed, but the
+breath grew fainter! at length, without murmur, sound, or struggle, it
+passed away--the head dropped from his bosom--the form fell from his
+arms-all was over!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+   *  *  *  *  "Is this the promised end?"--/Lear/.
+
+IT was two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house.  It
+was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning.  To him, while
+he walked through the streets, and the sharp winds howled on his path,
+it was as if a strange and wizard life had passed into and supported
+him--a sort of drowsy, dull existence.  He was like a sleepwalker,
+unconscious of all around him; yet his steps went safe and free; and the
+one thought that possessed his being--into which all intellect seemed
+shrunk--the thought, not fiery nor vehement, but calm, stern, and
+solemn--the thought of revenge--seemed, as it were, grown his soul
+itself.  He arrived at the door of Colonel Danvers, mounted the stairs,
+and as his friend advanced to meet him, said calmly, "Now, then, the
+hour has arrived."
+
+"But what would you do now?"
+
+"Come with me, and you shall learn."
+
+"Very well, my carriage is below.  Will you direct the servants?"
+
+Maltravers nodded, gave his orders to the careless footman, and the two
+friends were soon driving through the less known and courtly regions of
+the giant city.  It was then that Maltravers concisely stated to Danvers
+the fraud that had been practised by Cesarini.
+
+"You will go with me now," concluded Maltravers, "to his house.  To do
+him justice, he is no coward; he has not shrunk from giving me his
+address, nor will he shrink from the atonement I demand.  I shall wait
+below while you arrange our meeting--at daybreak for to-morrow."
+Danvers was astonished and even appalled by the discovery made to him.
+There was something so unusual and strange in the whole affair.  But
+neither his experience, nor his principles of honour, could suggest any
+alternative to the plan proposed.  For though not regarding the cause of
+quarrel in the same light as Maltravers, and putting aside all question
+as to the right of the latter to constitute himself the champion of the
+betrothed, or the avenger of the dead, it seemed clear to the soldier
+that a man whose confidential letter had been garbled by another for the
+purpose of slandering his truth and calumniating his name, had no option
+but contempt, or the sole retribution (wretched though it be) which the
+customs of the higher class permit to those who live within its pale.
+But contempt for a wrong that a sorrow so tragic had followed--was
+/that/ option in human philosophy?
+
+The carriage stopped at a door in a narrow lane in an obscure suburb.
+Yet, dark as all the houses around were, lights were seen in the upper
+windows of Cesarini's residence, passing to and fro; and scarce had the
+servant's loud knock echoed through the dim thoroughfare, ere the door
+was opened.  Danvers descended, and entered the passage--"Oh, sir, I am
+so glad you are come!" said an old woman, pale and trembling; "he do
+take on so!"
+
+"There is no mistake," asked Danvers, halting; "an Italian gentleman
+named Cesarini lodges here?"
+
+"Yes, sir, poor cretur--I sent for you to come to him--for says I to my
+boy, says I--"
+
+"Whom do you take me for?"
+
+"Why, la, sir, you be's the doctor, ben't you?"
+
+Danvers made no reply; he had a mean opinion of the courage of one who
+could act dishonourably; he thought there was some design to cheat his
+friend out of his revenge; accordingly he ascended the stairs, motioning
+the woman to precede him.
+
+He came back to the door of the carriage in a few minutes.  "Let us go
+home, Maltravers," said he, "this man is not in a state to meet you."
+
+"Ha!" cried Maltravers, frowning darkly, and all his long-smothered
+indignation rushing like fire through every vein of his body; "would he
+shrink from the atonement?"  He pushed Danvers impatiently aside, leapt
+from the carriage, and rushed up-stairs.
+
+Danvers followed.
+
+Heated, wrought-up, furious, Ernest Maltravers burst into a small and
+squalid chamber; from the closed doors of which, through many chinks,
+had gleamed the light that told him Cesarini was within.  And Cesarini's
+eyes, blazing with horrible fire, were the first object that met his
+gaze.  Maltravers stood still, as if frozen into stone.
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed a shrill and shrieking voice, which contrasted dreadly
+with the accents of the soft Tuscan, in which the wild words were
+strung--"who comes here with garments dyed in blood?  You cannot accuse
+me--for my blow drew no blood, it went straight to the heart--it tore no
+flesh by the way; we Italians poison our victims!  Where art thou--where
+art thou, Maltravers?  I am ready. Coward, you do not come!  Oh, yes,
+yes, here you are; the pistols--I will not fight so.  I am a wild beast.
+Let us rend each other with our teeth and talons!"
+
+Huddled up like a heap of confused and jointless limbs in the furthest
+corner of the room, lay the wretch, a raving maniac;--two men keeping
+their firm gripe on him, which, ever and anon, with the mighty strength
+of madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his
+strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver
+gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate
+and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect.  It
+was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral,
+the meeting of the foes!  Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the
+common strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority,
+premeditated vengeance--wise, gifted; all his faculties ripe, developed,
+at his command;--the complete and all-armed man, prepared for defence
+and offence against every foe--a man who, once roused in a righteous
+quarrel, would not have quailed before an army; and there and thus was
+his dark and fierce purpose dashed from his soul, shivered into atoms at
+his feet.  He felt the nothingness of man and man's wrath--in the
+presence of the madman on whose head the thunderbolt of a greater curse
+than human anger ever breathes had fallen.  In his horrible affliction
+the Criminal triumphed over the Avenger!
+
+"Yes! yes!" shouted Cesarini, again; "they tell me she is dying; but he
+is by her side;--pluck him thence--he shall not touch her hand--she
+shall not bless him--she is mine--if I killed her, I have saved her from
+him--she is mine in death.  Let me in, I say,--I will come in,--I will,
+I will see her, and strangle him at her feet."  With that, by a
+tremendous effort, he tore himself from the clutch of his holders, and
+with a sudden and exultant bound sprang across the room, and stood face
+to face with Maltravers.  The proud brave than turned pale, and recoiled
+a step--"It is he! it is he!" shrieked the maniac, and he leaped like a
+tiger at the throat of his rival.  Maltravers quickly seized his arm,
+and whirled him round.  Cesarini fell heavily on the floor, mute,
+senseless, and in strong convulsions.
+
+"Mysterious Providence!" murmured Maltravers, "thou hast justly rebuked
+the mortal for dreaming he might arrogate to himself thy privilege of
+vengeance.  Forgive the sinner, O God, as I do--as thou teachest this
+stubborn heart to forgive--as she forgave who is now with thee, a
+blessed saint in heaven!"
+
+When, some minutes afterwards, the doctor, who had been sent for,
+arrived, the head of the stricken patient lay on the lap of his foe, and
+it was the hand of Maltravers that wiped the froth from the white lips,
+and the voice of Maltravers that strove to soothe, and the tears of
+Maltravers that were falling on that fiery brow.
+
+"Tend him, sir, tend him as my brother," said Maltravers, hiding his
+face as he resigned the charge.  "Let him have all that can alleviate
+and cure--remove him hence to some fitter abode--send for the best
+advice.  Restore him, and--and--"  He could say no more, but left the
+room abruptly.
+
+It was afterwards ascertained that Cesarini had remained in the streets
+after his short interview with Ernest, that at length he had knocked at
+Lord Saxingham's door just in the very hour when death had claimed its
+victim.  He heard the announcement--he sought to force his way
+up-stairs--they thrust him from the house, and nothing more of him was
+known till he arrived at his own door, an hour before Danvers and
+Maltravers came, in raging frenzy.  Perhaps by one of the dim erratic
+gleams of light which always chequer the darkness of insanity, he
+retained some faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with
+Maltravers, which had happily guided his steps back to his abode.
+
+  *  *  *  *  *
+
+It was two months after this scene, a lovely Sabbath morning, in the
+earliest May, as Lumley, Lord Vargrave, sat alone, by the window in his
+late uncle's villa, in his late uncle's easy-chair--his eyes were
+resting musingly on the green lawn on which the windows opened, or
+rather on two forms that were seated upon a rustic bench in the middle
+of the sward.  One was the widow in her weeds, the other was that fair
+and lovely child destined to be the bride of the new lord.  The hands of
+the mother and daughter were clasped each in each.  There was sadness in
+the faces of both--deeper if more resigned on that of the elder, for the
+child sought to console her parent, and grief in childhood comes with a
+butterfly's wing.
+
+Lumley gazed on them both, and on the child more earnestly.
+
+"She is very lovely," he said; "she will be very rich. After all, I am
+not to be pitied.  I am a peer, and I have enough to live upon at
+present.  I am a rising man--our party wants peers; and though I could
+not have had more than a subaltern's seat at the Treasury Board six
+months ago, when I was an active, zealous, able commoner, now that I am
+a lord, with what they call a stake in the country, I may open my mouth
+and--bless me!  I know not how many windfalls may drop in!  My uncle was
+wiser than I thought in wrestling for this peerage, which he won and I
+wear!--Then, by and by, just at the age when I want to marry and have an
+heir (and a pretty wife saves one a vast deal of trouble), L200,000 and
+a young beauty!  Come, come, I have strong cards in my hands if I play
+them tolerably.  I must take care that she falls desperately in love
+with me.  Leave me alone for that--I know the sex, and have never failed
+except in--ah, that poor Florence!  Well, it is no use regretting!  Like
+thrifty artists, we must paint out the unmarketable picture, and call
+luckier creations to fill up the same canvas!"
+
+Here the servant interrupted Lord Vargrave's meditation by bringing in
+the letters and the newspapers which had just been forwarded from his
+town house.  Lord Vargrave had spoken in the Lords on the previous
+Friday, and he wished to see what the Sunday newspapers said of his
+speech.  So he took up one of the leading papers before he opened the
+letters.  His eyes rested upon two paragraphs in close neighbourhood
+with each other: the first ran thus:
+
+
+"The celebrated Mr. Maltravers has abruptly resigned his seat for the
+------ of ------, and left town yesterday on an extended tour on the
+Continent.  Speculation is busy on the causes of the singular and
+unexpected self-exile of a gentleman so distinguished--in the very
+zenith of his career."
+
+
+"So, he has given up the game!" muttered Lord Vargrave; "he was never a
+practical man--I am glad he is out of the way.  But what's this about
+myself?"
+
+
+"We hear that important changes are to take place in the government---it
+is said that ministers are at last alive to the necessity of
+strengthening themselves with new talent.  Among other appointments
+confidently spoken of in the best-informed circles, we learn that Lord
+Vargrave is to have the place of ------.  It will be a popular
+appointment.  Lord Vargrave is not a holiday orator, a mere declamatory
+rhetorician--but a man of clear business-like views, and was highly
+thought of in the House of Commons.  He has also the art of attaching
+his friends, and his frank, manly character cannot fail to have its due
+effect with the English public.  In another column of our journal our
+readers will see a full report of his excellent maiden speech in the
+House of Lords, on Friday last: the sentiments there expressed do the
+highest honour to his lordship's patriotism and sagacity."
+
+
+"Very well, very well indeed!" said Lumley, rubbing his hands; and
+turning to his letters, his attention was drawn to one with an enormous
+seal, marked "Private and confidential."  He knew before he opened it
+that it contained the offer of the appointment alluded to in the
+newspaper.  He read, and rose exultantly; passing through the French
+windows, he joined Lady Vargrave and Evelyn on the lawn, and, as he
+smiled on the mother and caressed the child, the scene and the group
+made a pleasant picture of English domestic happiness.
+
+Here ends the First Portion of this work: it ends in the view that
+bounds us when we look on the practical world with the outward
+unspiritual eye--and see life that dissatisfies justice,--for life is so
+seen but in fragments.  The influence of fate seems so small on the man
+who, in erring, but errs as the egotist, and shapes out of ill some use
+that can profit himself.  But Fate hangs a shadow so vast on the heart
+that errs but in venturing and knows only in others the sources of
+sorrow and joy.
+
+Go alone, O Maltravers, unfriendly, remote--thy present a waste, and thy
+past life a ruin, go forth to the future!--Go, Ferrers, light
+cynic--with the crowd take thy way,--complacent, elated,--no cloud upon
+conscience, for thou seest but sunshine on fortune.--Go forth to the
+future!
+
+Human life is compared to the circle.--Is the simile just?  All lines
+that are drawn from the centre to touch the circumference, by the law of
+the circle, are equal.  But the lines that are drawn from the heart of
+the man to the verge of his destiny--do they equal each other?--Alas!
+some seem so brief, and some lengthen on as for ever.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERNEST MALTRAVERS, LYTTON, V9 ***
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