Ernest Maltravers Part 36

"Lady Florence has indeed improved," said this new guest. "I could not have conceived that England boasted any one half so beautiful."

"She certainly is handsome, my dear Lumley,--the Lascelles cast of countenance," replied Lord Saxingham, "and so gifted! She is positively learned--quite a _bas bleu_. I tremble to think of the crowd of poets and painters who will make a fortune out of her enthusiasm. _Entre nous_, Lumley, I could wish her married to a man of sober sense, like the Duke of ------; for sober sense is exactly what she wants. Do observe, she has been sitting just half an hour flirting with that odd-looking adventurer, a Signor Cesarini, merely because he writes sonnets and wears a dress like a stage-player!"

"It is the weakness of the s.e.x, my dear lord," said Lumley; "they like to patronise, and they dote upon all oddities, from China monsters to cracked poets. But I fancy, by a restless glance cast every now and then around the room, that my beautiful cousin has in her something of the coquette."

"There you are quite right, Lumley," returned Lord Saxingham, laughing; "but I will not quarrel with her for breaking hearts and refusing hands, if she do but grow steady at last, and settle into the d.u.c.h.ess of------."

"d.u.c.h.ess of ------!" repeated Lumley, absently; "well, I will go and present myself. I see she is growing tired of the signor. I will sound her as to the ducal impressions, my dear lord."

"Do--I dare not," replied the father; "she is an excellent girl, but heiresses are always contradictory. It was very foolish to deprive me of all control over her fortune. Come and see me again soon, Lumley. I suppose you are going abroad?"

"No, I shall settle in England; but of my prospects and plans more hereafter."

With this, Lumley quietly glided away to Florence. There was something in Ferrers that was remarkable from its very simplicity. His clear, sharp features, with the short hair and high brow--the absolute plainness of his dress, and the noiseless, easy, self-collected calm of all his motions, made a strong contrast to the showy Italian, by whose side he now stood. Florence looked up at him with some little surprise at his intrusion.

"Ah, you don't recollect me!" said Lumley, with his pleasant laugh.

"Faithless Imogen, after all your vows of constancy! Behold your Alonzo!

'The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out.'

"Don't you remember how you trembled when I told you that true story, as we

'Conversed as we sat on the green"?

"Oh!" cried Florence, "it is indeed you, my dear cousin--my dear Lumley!

What an age since we parted!"

"Don't talk of age--it is an ugly word to a man of my years. Pardon, signor, if I disturb you."

And here Lumley, with a low bow, slid coolly into the place which Cesarini, who had shyly risen, left vacant for him. Castruccio looked disconcerted; but Florence had forgotten him in her delight at seeing Lumley, and Cesarini moved discontentedly away, and seated himself at a distance.

"And I come back," continued Lumley, "to find you a confirmed beauty and a professional coquette--don't blus.h.!.+"

"Do they, indeed, call me a coquette?"

"Oh, yes,--for once the world is just."

"Perhaps I do deserve the reproach. Oh, Lumley, how I despise all that I see and hear!"

"What, even the Duke of ------?"

"Yes, I fear even the Duke of ------ is no exception!"

"Your father will go mad if he hear you."

"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 b.a.l.l.s 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 n.o.bleness 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 high-souled Idealist.

The selfishness of his nature broke out in all the sentiments that he fancied would seem to her most elevated. Place--power--t.i.tles--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 companions.h.i.+p, for friends.h.i.+p, 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 queen-like brow of the great heiress.

Oh, yes, she had a soul--she 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_ fancy-free!"

CHAPTER IV.

"In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires, Et valui poenas fortis in ipse meas."*--OVID.

* I had the strength of a madman to my own cost, and employed that strength in my own punishment.

"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.