struck by a grave change in
Ernest's face.

"Do you never waltz?" she asked, while the guardsman was searching for a
corner wherein safely to deposit his hat.

"No," said he; "yet there is no impropriety in _my_ waltzing."

"And you mean that there is in mine?"

"Pardon me--I did not say so."

"But you think it."

"Nay, on consideration, I am glad, perhaps, that you do waltz."

"You are mysterious."

"Well then, I mean, that you are precisely the woman I would never fall
in love with. And I feel the danger is lessened, when I see you destroy
any one of my illusions, or, I ought to say, attack any one of my
prejudices."

Lady Florence coloured; but the guardsman and the music left her no
time for reply. However, after that night she waltzed no more. She was
unwell--she declared she was ordered not to dance, and so quadrilles
were relinquished as well as the waltz.

Maltravers could not but be touched and flattered by this regard for
his opinion; but Florence contrived to testify it so as to forbid
acknowledgment, since another motive had been found for it. The second
evening after that commemorated by Ernest's candid rudeness, they
chanced to meet in the conservatory, which was connected with the
ball-room; and Ernest, pausing to inquire after her health, was struck
by the listless and dejected sadness which spoke in her tone and
countenance as she replied to him.

"Dear Lady Florence," said he, "I fear you are worse than you will
confess. You should shun these draughts. You owe it to your friends to
be more careful of yourself."

"Friends!" said Lady Florence, bitterly--"I have no friends!--even my
poor father would not absent himself from a cabinet dinner a week
after I was dead. But that is the condition of public life--its hot
and searing blaze puts out the lights of all lesser but not unholier
affections.--Friends! Fate, that made Florence Lascelles the envied
heiress, denied her brothers, sisters; and the hour of her birth lost
her even the love of a mother! Friends! where shall I find them?"

As she ceased, she turned to the open casement, and stepped out into
the verandah, and by the trembling of her voice Ernest felt that she had
done so to hide or to suppress her tears.

"Yet," said he, following her, "there is one class of more distant
friends, whose interest Lady Florence Lascelles cannot fail to secure,
however she may disdain it. Among the humblest of that class, suffer me
to rank myself.