o know
What some brave marble soon in church shall show?"
CRABBE.

IT may seem strange, but Maltravers had never loved Lady Florence as he
did now. Was it the perversity of human nature that makes the things of
mortality dearer to us in proportion as they fade from our hopes, like
birds whose hues are only unfolded when they take wing and vanish amidst
the skies; or was it that he had ever doted more on loveliness of mind
than that of form, and the first bloomed out the more, the more the last
decayed? A thing to protect, to soothe, to shelter--oh, how dear it is
to the pride of man! The haughty woman who can stand alone and requires
no leaning-place in our heart, loses the spell of her sex.

I pass over those stages of decline gratuitously painful to record; and
which in this case mine cannot be the cold and technical hand to trace.
At length came that time when physicians could define within a few days
the final hour of release. And latterly the mocking pruderies of rank
had been laid aside, and Maltravers had, for some hours at least in the
day, taken his watch beside the couch to which the admired and brilliant
Florence Lascelles was now almost constantly reduced. But her high and
heroic spirit was with her to the last. To the last she could endure
love and hope. One day when Maltravers left his post, she besought him,
with more solemnity than usual, to return that evening. She fixed the
precise hour, and she sighed heavily when he departed. Maltravers
paused in the hall to speak to the physician, who was just quitting Lord
Saxingham's library. Ernest spoke to him for some moments calmly, and
when he heard the fiat, he betrayed no other emotion than a slight
quiver of the lip! "I must not weep for her yet," he muttered, as he
turned from the door. He went thence to the house of a gentleman of his
own age, with whom he had formed that kind of acquaintance which never
amounts to familiar friendship, but rests upon mutual respect, and
is often more ready than professed friendship itself to confer mutual
service. Colonel Danvers was a man who usually sat next to Maltravers in
parliament; they voted together, and thought alike on principles both
of politics and honour: they would have lent thousands to each other
without bond or memorandum; and neither ever wanted a warm and indignant
advocate when he was abused behind his back in the presence of the
other. Yet their tastes and ordinary habits were not conge