ts for ever--and the dark and
noisome vault were not the only lasting residence for the things of
clay.

Florence Lascelles was dying; but not indeed wholly of that common,
if mystic malady, a broken heart. Her health, always delicate, because
always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, and feverish spirit, had
been gradually and invisibly undermined, even before Ernest confessed
his love. In the singular lustre of those large-pupilled eyes--in the
luxuriant transparency of that glorious bloom,--the experienced might
long since have traced the seeds which cradled death. In the night
when her restless and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to
forestall the communication of Lumley (whom she had sent to Maltravers,
she scarce knew for what object, or with what hope), in that night she
was already in a high state of fever. The rain and the chill struck the
growing disease within--her excitement gave it food and fire--delirium
succeeded; and in that most fearful and fatal of all medical errors,
which robs the frame, when it most needs strength, of the very principle
of life, they had bled her into a temporary calm, and into permanent and
incurable weakness. Consumption seized its victim. The physicians who
attended her were the most renowned in London, and Lord Saxingham was
firmly persuaded that there was no danger. It was not in his nature
to think that death would take so great a liberty with Lady Florence
Lascelles, when there were so many poor people in the world whom there
would be no impropriety in removing from it. But Florence knew her
danger, and her high spirit did not quail before it. Yet, when Cesarini,
stung beyond endurance by the horrors of his remorse, wrote and
confessed all his own share of the fatal treason, though, faithful to
his promise, he concealed that of his accomplice,--then, ah then, she
did indeed repine at her doom, and long to look once more with the eyes
of love and joy upon the face of the beautiful world. But the illness of
the body usually brings out a latent power and philosophy of the soul,
which health never knows; and God has mercifully ordained it as the
customary lot of nature, that in proportion as we decline into the
grave, the sloping path is made smooth and easy to our feet; and every
day, as the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the
false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a
wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.

It