y heaven! Is it
clouded? night is with me!--is it radiant? I am as the Persian gazing on
the sun!"

"Why do you speak thus to me? were you not a poet, I might be angry."

"You were not angry when the English poet, that cold Maltravers, spoke
to you perhaps as boldly."

Lady Florence drew up her haughty head. "Signor," said she, checking,
however, her first impulse, and with mildness, "Mr. Maltravers neither
flatters nor--"

"Presumes, you were about to say," said Cesarini, grinding his teeth.
"But it is well--once you were less chilling to the utterance of my deep
devotion."

"Never, Signor Cesarini, never--but when I thought it was but the common
gallantry of your nation: let me think so still."

"No, proud woman," said Cesarini, fiercely, "no--hear the truth."

Lady Florence rose indignantly.

"Hear me," he continued. "I--I, the poor foreigner, the despised
minstrel, dare to lift up my eyes to you! I love you!"

Never had Florence Lascelles been so humiliated and confounded. However
she might have amused herself with the vanity of Cesarini, she had not
given him, as she thought, the warrant to address her--the great Lady
Florence, the prize of dukes and princes--in this hardy manner; she
almost fancied him insane. But the next moment she recalled the warning
of Maltravers, and felt as if her punishment had commenced.

"You will think and speak more calmly, sir, when we meet again," and so
saying, she swept away.

Cesarini remained rooted to the spot, with his dark countenance
expressing such passions as are rarely seen in the aspects of civilised
men.

"Where do you lodge, Signor Cesarini?" asked the bland, familiar voice
of Ferrers. "Let us walk part of the way together--that is, when you are
tired of these hot rooms."

Cesarini groaned. "You are ill," continued Ferrers; "the air will
revive you--come." He glided from the room, and the Italian mechanically
followed him. They walked together for some moments in silence, side
by side, in a clear, lovely, moonlight night. At length Ferrers said,
"Pardon me, my dear signor, but you may already have observed that I am
a very frank, odd sort of fellow. I see you are caught by the charms of
my cruel cousin. Can I serve you in any way?"

A man at all acquainted with the world in which we live would have been
suspicious of such cordiality in the cousin of an heiress, towards a
very unsuitable aspirant. But Cesarini, like many indifferent poets (but
like few