measure; but prouder is it to feel that you have never
advanced one step to the goal, which remembrance would retract. No, my
friend, wait your time, confident that it must come, when conscience and
ambition can go hand-in-hand--when the broad objects of a luminous and
enlarged policy lie before you like a chart, and you can calculate every
step of the way without peril of being lost. Ah, let them still
call loftiness of purpose and whiteness of soul the dreams of a
theorist,--even if they be so, the Ideal in this case is better than the
Practical. Meanwhile your position is not one to forfeit lightly. Before
you is that throne in literature which it requires no doubtful step
to win, if you have, as I believe, the mental power to attain it. An
ambition that may indeed be relinquished, if a more troubled career can
better achieve those public purposes at which both letters and policy
should aim, but which is not to be surrendered for the rewards of a
place-man, or the advancement of a courtier."

It was while uttering these noble and inspiring sentiments, that
Florence Lascelles suddenly acquired in Ernest's eyes a loveliness with
which they had not before invested her.

"Oh," he said, as, with a sudden impulse, he lifted her hand to his
lips, "blessed be the hour in which you gave me your friendship! These
are the thoughts I have longed to hear from living lips, when I have
been tempted to believe patriotism a delusion, and virtue but a name."

Lady Florence heard, and her whole form seemed changed,--she was no
longer the majestic sibyl, but the attached, timorous, delighted woman.

It so happened that in her confusion she dropped from her hand the
flower Maltravers had given her, and involuntarily glad of a pretext to
conceal her countenance, she stooped to take it from the ground. In so
doing, a letter fell from her bosom--and Maltravers, as he bent forwards
to forestall her own movement, saw that the direction was to himself,
and in the handwriting of his unknown correspondent. He seized the
letter, and gazed in flattered and entranced astonishment, first on the
writing, next on the detected writer. Florence grew deadly pale, and
covering her face with her hands, burst into tears.

"O fool that I was," cried Ernest, in the passion of the moment, "not to
know--not to have felt that there were not two Florences in the world!
But if the thought had crossed me, I would not have dared to harbour
it."

"Go, go," sobb