ch readiness to attribute to others the
basest objects,--such willingness to avail ourselves of the poorest
stratagems! The ends may be great, but the means are very ambiguous."

"I knew _you_ would feel this," exclaimed Lady Florence, with a
heightened colour.

"Did you?" said Maltravers, rather interested as well as surprised. "I
scarcely imagined it possible that you would deign to divine secrets so
insignificant."

"You did not do me justice, then," returned Lady Florence, with an arch
yet half-painful smile; "for--but I was about to be impertinent."

"Nay, say on."

"For--then--I do not imagine you to be one apt to do injustice to
yourself."

"Oh, you consider me presumptuous and arrogant; but that is common
report, and you do right, perhaps, to believe it."

"Was there ever any one unconscious of his own merit?" asked Lady
Florence, proudly. "They who distrust themselves have good reason for
it."

"You seek to cure the wound you inflicted," returned Maltravers,
smiling.

"No; what I said was an apology for myself, as well as for you. You need
no words to vindicate you; you are a man, and can bear out all arrogance
with the royal motto _Dieu et mon droit_. With you deeds can support
pretension; but I am a woman--it was a mistake of Nature."

"But what triumphs that man can achieve bring so immediate, so palpable
a reward as those won by a woman, beautiful and admired--who finds every
room an empire, and every class her subjects?"

"It is a despicable realm."

"What!--to command--to win--to bow to your worship--the greatest, and
the highest, and the sternest; to own slaves in those whom men recognise
as their lords! Is such a power despicable? If so, what power is to be
envied?"

Lady Florence turned quickly round to Maltravers, and fixed on him her
large dark eyes, as if she would read into his very heart. She turned
away with a blush and a slight frown--"There is mockery on your lip,"
said she.

Before Maltravers could answer, dinner was announced, and a foreign
ambassador claimed the hand of Lady Florence. Maltravers saw a young
lady with gold oats in her very light hair, fall to his lot, and
descended to the dining-room, thinking more of Lady Florence Lascelles
than he had ever done before.

He happened to sit nearly opposite to the young mistress of the house
(Lord Saxingham, as the reader knows, was a widower and Lady Florence
an only child); and Maltravers was that day in one of those fel