"Yes, I fear even the Duke of **** is no exception." "Your father will go mad if he hear you."

66

My father!-my poor father!-yes, he thinks the utmost that I, Florence Lascelles, am made for, is to wear a ducal coronet and give the best balls in London."

"And pray what was Florence Lascelles made for ?" "Ah! I cannot answer the question. I fear for Discontent and Disdain."

“You are an enigma—but I will take pains, and not rest till I solve you.'

"I defy you.'

"Thanks better defy than despise."

"Oh, you must be strangely altered, if I can despise you."

"Indeed! what do you remember of me?"

"That you were frank, bold, and therefore, I suppose, true! that you shocked my aunts and my father by your contempt for the vulgar hypocrisies of our conventional life. Oh, no! I cannot despise you."

Lumley raised his eyes to those of Florence-he gazed on her long and earnestly-ambitious hopes rose high within him.

"My fair cousin," said he, in an altered and serious tone, "I see something in your spirit kindred to mine; and I am glad that yours is one of the earliest voices which confirm my new resolves on my return to busy England!"

"And those resolves?"

"Are an Englishman's-energetic and ambitious."

"Alas, ambition! How many false portraits are there of the great original!"

Lumley thought he had found a clue to the heart of his cousin, and he began to expatiate, with unusual eloquence, on the nobleness of that daring sin which "lost angels heaven." Florence listened to him with attention, but not with sympathy. Lumley was deceived. His was not an ambition that could attract the fastidious but highsouled Idealist. The selfishness of his nature broke out in all the sentiments that he fancied would seem to her most elevated. Place-power-titles-all these objects

were low and vulgar to one who saw them daily at her feet.

At a distance the Duke of **** continued from time to time to direct his cold gaze at Florence. He did not like her the less for not seeming to court him. He had something generous within him, and could understand her. He went away at last, and thought seriously of Florence as a wife. Not a wife for companionship, for friendship, for love; but a wife who could take the trouble of rank off his hands-do him honour, and raise him an heir, whom he might flatter himself would be his

own.

From his corner also, with dreams yet more vain and daring, Castruccio Cesarini cast his eyes upon the queenlike brow of the great heiress. Oh yes, she had a soulshe could disdain rank and revere genius! What a triumph over De Montaigne-Maltravers all the world, if he, the neglected poet, could win the hand for which the magnates of the earth sighed in vain! Pure and lofty as he thought himself, it was her birth and her wealth which Cesarini adored in Florence. And Lumley, nearer perhaps to the prize than either-yet still far off-went on conversing, with eloquent lips and sparkling eyes, while his cold heart was planning every word, dictating every glance, and laying out (for the most worldly are often the most visionary) the chart for a royal road to fortune. And Florence Lascelles, when the crowd had dispersed and she sought her chamber, forgot all three; and with that morbid romance often peculiar to those for whom Fate smiles the most, mused over the ideal image of the one she could love-"in maiden meditation not fancyfree!"

CHAPTER IV.

"In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires
Et valui pœnas fortis in ipsa meas.”—OVID.

"Then might my breast be read within,

A thousand volumes would be written there."
EARL OF STIRLING.

ERNEST MALTRAVERS was at the height of his reputation; the work which he had deemed the crisis that was to make or mar him was the most brilliantly successful of all he had yet committed to the public. Certainly, chance did as much for it as merit, as is usually the case with works that become instantaneously popular. We may hammer away at the casket with strong arm and good purpose, and all in vain, when some morning a careless stroke hits the right nail on the head, and we secure the treasure.

It was at this time, when in the prime of youth— rich, courted, respected, run after-that Ernest Maltravers fell seriously ill. It was no active or visible disease, but a general irritability of the nerves, and a languid sinking of the whole frame. His labours began, perhaps, to tell against him. In earlier life he had been active as a hunter of the chamois, and the hardy exercise of his frame counteracted the effects of a restless and ardent mind. The change from an athletic to a sedentary habit of life-the wear and tear of the brain-the absorbing passion for knowledge which day and night kept all his faculties in a stretch, made strange havoc in a constitution naturally strong. The poor author! how few persons understand, and forbear with, and pity him! He sells his health and youth to a rugged taskmaster. And, O blind and selfish world, you expect him to be as free of manner, and as pleasant of cheer, and as equal of mood, as if he were passing the most agreeable and healthful

existence that pleasure could afford to smoothe the wrinkles of the mind, or medicine invent to regulate the nerves of the body! But there was, besides all this, another cause that operated against the successful man!-His heart was too solitary. He lived without the sweet household ties -the connexions and amities he formed excited for a moment, but possessed no charm to comfort or to soothe. Cleveland resided so much in the country, and was of so much calmer a temperament, and so much more advanced in age, that with all the friendship that subsisted between them, there was none of that daily and familiar interchange of confidence which affectionate natures demand as the very food of life. Of his brother (as the reader will conjecture from never having been formally presented to him) Ernest saw but little. Colonel Maltravers, one of the gayest and handsomest men of his time, married to a fine lady, lived principally at Paris, except when, for a few weeks in the shooting season, he filled his country house with companions who had nothing in common with Ernest: the brothers corresponded regularly every quarter, and saw each other once a-year-this was all their intercourse. Ernest Maltravers stood in the world alone, with that cold but anxious spectre-Reputation.

It was late at night. Before a table covered with the monuments of erudition and thought sate a young man with a pale and worn countenance. The clock in the room told with a fretting distinctness every moment that lessened the journey to the grave. There was an anxious and expectant expression on the face of the student, and from time to time he glanced to the clock, and muttered to himself. Was it a letter from some adored mistressthe soothing flattery from some mighty arbiter of arts and letters-that the young man eagerly awaited? No, the aspirer was forgotten in the valetudinarian. Ernest Maltravers was waiting the visit of his physician, whom at that late hour a sudden thought had induced him to summon from his rest. At length the well-known knock was heard, and in a few moments the physician entered. He was one well versed in the peculiar pathology of book men, and kindly as well as skilful.

How are

"My dear Mr. Maltravers, what is this? we?—not seriously ill, I hope-no relapse-pulse low and irregular, I see, but no fever. You are nervous."

"Doctor," said the student, "I did not send for you at this time of night from the idle fear or fretful caprice of an invalid. But when I saw you this morning, you dropped some hints which have haunted me ever since. Much that it befits the conscience and the soul to attend to without loss of time, depends upon my full knowledge of my real state. If I understand you rightly, I may have but a short time to live-is it so?"

"Indeed!" said the doctor, turning away his face; "you have exaggerated my meaning. I did not say that you were in what we technically call danger."

"Am I then likely to be a long-lived man?"

The doctor coughed. "That is uncertain, my dear young friend," said he, after a pause.

"Be plain with me. The plans of life must be based upon such calculations as we can reasonably form of its probable duration. Do not fancy that I am weak enough or coward enough to shrink from any abyss which I have approached unconsciously; I desire - I adjure - nay, I command you to be explicit."

There was an earnest and solemn dignity in his patient's voice and manner which deeply touched and impressed the good physician.

"I will answer you frankly," said he; "you over-work the nerves and the brain; if you do not relax, you will subject yourself to confirmed disease and premature death. For several months-perhaps for years to come-you should wholly cease from literary labour. Is this a hard sentence? You are rich and young-enjoy yourself while

you can.

Maltravers appeared satisfied-changed the conversation -talked easily on other matters for a few minutes: nor was it till he had dismissed his physician that he broke forth with the thoughts that were burning in him.

"Oh!" cried he aloud, as he rose and paced the room with rapid strides; "now when I see before me the broad and luminous path, am I to be condemned to halt and turn