-if he had been proposing to the daughter of a
country curate, without a sixpence, he would have been the humblest of
the humble. The earl was embarrassed and discomposed--he was almost awed
by the Siddons-like countenance and Coriolanus-like air of his future
son-in-law-he even hinted nothing of the compromise as to time which
he had made with his daughter. He thought it better to leave it to Lady
Florence to arrange that matter. They shook hands frigidly and parted.
Maltravers went next into Cleveland's room, and communicated all to the
delighted old man, whose congratulations were so fervid that Maltravers
felt it would be a sin not to fancy himself the happiest, man in the
world. That night he wrote his refusal of the appointment offered him.

The next day, Lord Saxingham went to his office in Downing Street as
usual, and Lady Florence and Ernest found an opportunity to ramble
through the grounds alone.

There it was that occurred those confessions, sweet alike to utter and
to hear. Then did Florence speak of her early years--of her self-formed
and solitary mind--of her youthful dreams and reveries. Nothing around
her to excite interest or admiration, or the more romantic, the higher,
or the softer qualities of her nature, she turned to contemplation and
to books. It is the combination of the faculties with the affections,
exiled from action, and finding no worldly vent, which produces Poetry,
the child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real cares of
existence claim them, the young, who are abler yet lonelier than their
fellows, are nearly always poets; and Florence was a poetess. In minds
like this, the first book that seems to embody and represent their own
most cherished and beloved trains of sentiment and ideas, ever creates
a reverential and deep enthusiasm. The lonely, and proud, and melancholy
soul of Maltravers, which made itself visible in all his creations,
became to Florence like a revealer of the secrets of her own nature.
She conceived an intense and mysterious interest in the man whose mind
exercised so pervading a power over her own. She made herself acquainted
with his pursuits, his career--she fancied she found a symmetry and
harmony between the actual being and the breathing genius--she imagined
she understood what seemed dark and obscure to others. He whom she
had never seen grew to her a never-absent friend. His ambition, his
reputation, were to her like a possession of her own. So at