. 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
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 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--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