“I have no right to argue with you.”
“Yes, argue with me, convince me, guide me—Heaven knows that, impetuous and haughty as I am, I need a guide,”—and Lady Florence’s eyes swam with tears. Ernest’s prejudices against her were greatly shaken: he was even somewhat dazzled by her beauty, and touched by her unexpected gentleness; but still, his heart was not assailed, and he replied almost coldly, after a short pause:
“Dear Lady Florence, look round the world—who so much to be envied as yourself? What sources of happiness and pride are open to you! Why, then, make to yourself causes of discontent?—why be scornful of those who cross not your path? Why not look with charity upon God’s less endowed children, beneath you as they may seem? What consolation have you in hurting the hearts or the vanities of others? Do you raise yourself even in your own estimation? You affect to be above your sex—yet what character do you despise more in women than that which you assume? Semiramis should not be a coquette. There now, I have offended you—I confess I am very rude.”
“I am not offended,” said Florence, almost struggling with her tears; and she added inly, “Ah, I am too happy!”—There are some lips from which even the proudest women love to hear the censure which appears to disprove indifference.
It was at this time that Lumley Ferrers, flushed with the success of his schemes and projects, entered the room; and his quick eye fell upon that corner, in which he detected what appeared to him a very alarming flirtation between his rich cousin and Ernest Maltravers. He advanced to the spot, and, with his customary frankness, extended a hand to each.
“Ah, my dear and fair cousin, give me your congratulations, and ask me for my first frank, to be bound up in a collection of autographs by distinguished senators—it will sell high one of these days. Your most obedient, Mr. Maltravers;—how we shall laugh in our sleeves at the humbug of politics, when you and I, the best friends in the world, sit vis-a-vis on opposite benches. But why, Lady Florence, have you never introduced me to your pet Italian? Allons! I am his match in Alfieri, whom, of course, he swears by, and whose verses, by the way, seem cut out of box-wood—the hardest material for turning off that sort of machinery that invention ever hit on.”
Thus saying, Ferrers contrived, as he thought, very cleverly, to divide a pair that he much feared were justly formed to meet by nature—and, to his great joy, Maltravers shortly afterwards withdrew.
Ferrers, with the happy ease that belonged to his complacent, though plotting character, soon made Cesarini at home with him; and two or three slighting expressions which the former dropped with respect to Maltravers, coupled with some outrageous compliments to the Italian, completely won the heart of the poet. The brilliant Florence was more silent and subdued than usual; and her voice was softer, though graver, when she replied to Castruccio’s eloquent appeals. Castruccio was one of those men who talk fine. By degrees, Lumley lapsed into silence, and listened to what took place between Lady Florence and the Italian, while appearing to be deep in “The Views of the Rhine,” which lay on the table.
“Ah,” said the latter, in his soft native tongue, “could you know how I watch every shade of that countenance which makes my heaven! Is it clouded? night is with me!—is it radiant? I am as the Persian gazing on the sun!”
“Why do you speak thus to me? were you not a poet, I might be angry.”