earn from yon skies, over
which, in the faith of the poets of old, brooded the wings of primaeval
and serenest Love, what earthly love should be,--a thing pure as light,
and peaceful as immortality, watching over the stormy world, that it
shall survive, and high above the clouds and vapours that roll below.
Let little minds introduce into the holiest of affections all the
bitterness and tumult of common life! Let us love as beings who will one
day be inhabitants of the stars!"

CHAPTER IV.

"A slippery and subtle knave; a finder out of occasions, that
has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages."--_Othello_.

"Knavery's plain face is never seen till used."-_-Ibid._

"You see, my dear Lumley," said Lord Saxingham, as the next day the two
kinsmen were on their way to London in the earl's chariot, "you see that
at the best this marriage of Flory's is a cursed bore."

"Why, indeed, it has its disadvantages. Maltravers is a gentleman and
a man of genius; but gentlemen are plentiful, and his genius only tells
against us, since he is not even of our politics."

"Exactly--my own son-in-law voting against me!"

"A practicable, reasonable man would change; not so Maltravers--and all
the estates, and all the parliamentary influence, and all the wealth
that ought to go with the family and with the party, go out of the
family and against the party. You are quite right, my dear lord--it is a
cursed bore."

"And she might have had the Duke of ------, a man with a rental
of L100,000 a year. It is too ridiculous. This Maltravers, d----d
disagreeable fellow, too, eh?"

"Stiff and stately--much changed for the worse of late years--grown
conceited and set up."

"Do you know, Lumley, I would rather, of the two, have had you for my
son-in-law?"

Lumley half started. "Are you serious, my lord? I have not Ernest's
fortune--I cannot make such settlements: my lineage, too, at least on my
mother's side, is less ancient."

"Oh, as to settlements, Flory's fortune ought to be settled on
herself,--and as compared with that fortune, what could Mr. Maltravers
pretend to settle? Neither she nor any children she may have could want
his L4,000 a year, if he settled it all. As for family, connections tell
more nowadays than Norman descent,--and for the rest, you are likely to
be old Templeton's heir, to have a peerage (a large sum of ready money
is always useful)--are rising in the House--one of our own set--will
soon be in offi