creature
spoilt by being a woman. He once told her so, laughing, and Florence
considered it a compliment. Poor Florence, her scorn of her sex avenged
her sex, and robbed her of her proper destiny!

Cleveland silently observed their intimacy, and listened with a quiet
smile to the gossips who pointed out _tetes-a-tetes_ by the terrace, and
loiterings by the lawn, and predicted what would come of it all. Lord
Saxingham was blind. But his daughter was of age, in possession of her
princely fortune, and had long made him sensible of her independence of
temper. His lordship, however, thoroughly misunderstood the character of
her pride, and felt fully convinced she would marry no one less than
a duke; as for flirtations, he thought them natural and innocent
amusements. Besides, he was very little at Temple Grove. He went to
London every morning, after breakfasting in his own room--came back to
dine, play at whist, and talk good-humoured nonsense to Florence in his
dressing-room, for the three minutes that took place between his sipping
his wine-and-water and the appearance of his valet. As for the other
guests, it was not their business to do more than gossip with each
other; and so Florence and Maltravers went on their way unmolested,
though not unobserved. Maltravers, not being himself in love, never
fancied that Lady Florence loved him, or that she would be in any danger
of doing so. This is a mistake a man often commits--a woman never. A
woman always knows when she is loved, though she often imagines she is
loved when she is not. Florence was not happy, for happiness is a calm
feeling. But she was excited with a vague, wild, intoxicating emotion.

She had learned from Maltravers that she had been misinformed by
Ferrers, and that no other claimed empire over his heart; and whether or
not he loved her, still for the present they seemed all in all to each
other; she lived but for the present day, she would not think of the
morrow.

Since that severe illness which had tended so much to alter Ernest's
mode of life, he had not come before the public as an author. Latterly,
however, the old habit had broken out again. With the comparative
idleness of recent years, the ideas and feelings which crowd so fast on
the poetical temperament, once indulged, had accumulated within him to
an excess that demanded vent. For with some, to write is not a vague
desire, but an imperious destiny. The fire is kindled and must break
forth; the w