" said Lady Florence, and her cheek grew
pale as the starlight shone on it; "still, perhaps," she added quickly,
"I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now," and here,
approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on
his arm--"why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as
you call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its
place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You
are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette;
let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give
another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets."

Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in
words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie.

"The world," said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, "the
world will--"

"Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything
pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and
cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The world--are
you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its methodical
hypocrisy?"

"Heartily!" said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. "No man ever
so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds--its war upon the
weak--its fawning upon the great--its ingratitude to benefactors--its
sordid league with mediocrity against excellence. Yes, in proportion as
I love mankind, I despise and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy
which mankind set over them and call 'THE WORLD.'"

And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feelings, long
and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so calm and
self-possessed, poured burningly and passionately forth all those
tumultuous and almost tremendous thoughts, which, however much we may
regulate, control, or disguise them, lurk deep within the souls of all
of us, the seeds of the eternal war between the natural man and
the artificial; between our wilder genius and our social
conventionalities;--thoughts that from time to time break forth into the
harbingers of vain and fruitless revolutions, impotent struggles against
destiny;--thoughts that good and wise men would be slow to promulge and
propagate, for they are of a fire which burns as well as brightens,
and which spreads from heart to heart--as a spark spreads amidst
flax;--thoughts which are rifest where natures are most high, but