contemplations of the ruin you had made, I curbed the impulse that would
have crushed the life from your bosom. I told you to live on while life
was left to her. If she recovered, I could forgive; if she died, I must
avenge. We entered into that solemn compact, and in a few hours the bond
will need the seal: it is the blood of one of us. Castruccio Cesarini,
there is justice in Heaven. Deceive yourself not; you will fall by my
hand. When the hour comes, you will hear from me. Let me pass--I have no
more now to say."

Every syllable of this speech was uttered with that thrilling
distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in the
voice. But Cesarini did not appear to understand its import. He seized
Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face with a wild and menacing
glare.

"Did you tell me she was dying?" he said. "I ask you that question:
why do you not answer me? Oh, by the way, you threaten me with your
vengeance. Know you not that I long to meet you front to front, and
to the death? Did I not tell you so--did I not try to move your slow
blood--to insult you into a conflict in which I should have gloried? Yet
then you were marble."

"Because _my_ wrong I could forgive, and _hers_--there was then a hope
that hers might not need the atonement. Away!"

Maltravers shook the hold of the Italian from his arm, and passed on. A
wild, sharp yell of despair rang after him, and echoed in his ear as
he strode the long, dim, solitary stairs that led to the death-bed of
Florence Lascelles.

Maltravers entered the room adjoining that which contained the
sufferer--the same room, still gay and cheerful, in which had been his
first interview with Florence since their reconciliation.

Here he found the physician dozing in a _fauteuil_. Lady Florence had
fallen asleep during the last two or three hours. Lord Saxingham was in
his own apartment, deeply and noisily affected; for it was not thought
that Florence could survive the night.

Maltravers sat himself quietly down. Before him, on a table, lay several
manuscript books, gaily and gorgeously bound; he mechanically opened
them. Florence's fair, noble Italian characters met his eye in every
page. Her rich and active mind, her love for poetry, her thirst for
knowledge, her indulgence of deep thought, spoke from those pages
like the ghosts of herself. Often, underscored with the marks of her
approbation, he chanced upon extracts from his own works, sometimes up