the glare of noon--it
passes dim and wan at night beneath the stars and the earth--it looked
into his heart and left its likeness there for ever and for ever!
Those cheeks, once so beautifully rounded, now sunken into lines and
hollows--the livid darkness beneath the eyes--the whitened lip--the
sharp, anxious, worn expression, which had replaced that glorious and
beaming regard from which all the life of genius, all the sweet pride of
womanhood had glowed forth, and in which not only the intelligence, but
the eternity of the soul, seemed visibly wrought.

There he stood, aghast and appalled. At length a low groan broke from
his lips--he rushed forward, sank on his knees beside her, and clasping
both her hands, sobbed aloud as he covered them with kisses. All the
iron of his strong nature was broken down, and his emotions, long
silenced, and now uncontrollable and resistless, were something terrible
to behold!

"Do not--do not weep so," murmured Lady Florence, frightened by his
vehemence; "I am sadly changed, but the fault is mine--Ernest, it is
mine; best, kindest, gentlest, how could I have been so mad! And you
forgive me? I am yours again--a little while yours. Ah, do not grieve
while I am so blessed!"

As she spoke, her tears--tears from a source how different from that
whence broke the scorching and intolerable agony of his own! fell soft
upon his bended head, and the hands that still convulsively strained
hers. Maltravers looked wildly up into her countenance, and shuddered
as he saw her attempt to smile. He rose abruptly, threw himself into
a chair, and covered his face. He was seeking by a violent effort to
master himself, and it was only by the heaving of his chest, and now and
then a gasp as for breath, that he betrayed the stormy struggle within.

Florence gazed at him a moment in bitter, in almost selfish penitence.
"And this was the man who seemed to me so callous to the softer
sympathies--this was the heart I trampled upon--this the nature I
distrusted!"

She came near him, trembling and with feeble steps--she laid her hand
upon his shoulder, and the fondness of love came over her, and she wound
her arms around him.

"It is our fate--it is my fate," said Maltravers at last, awaking as
from a hideous dream, and in a hollow but calm voice--"we are the things
of destiny, and the wheel has crushed us. It is an awful state of
being this human life!--What is wisdom--virtue--faith to men--piety to
Heaven-