“I know not that: I dread that you will love me less when you know me more. I fear I shall seem to you exacting—I am jealous already. I was jealous even of Lady T———, when I saw you by her side this morning. I would have your every look—monopolise your every word.”
This confession did not please Maltravers, as it might have done if he had been more deeply in love. Jealousy, in a woman of so vehement and imperious a nature, was indeed a passion to be dreaded.
“Do not say so, dear Florence,” said he, with a very grave smile; “for love should have implicit confidence as its bond and nature—and jealousy is doubt, and doubt is the death of love.”
A shade passed over Florence’s too expressive face, and she sighed heavily.
It was at this time that Maltravers, raising his eyes, saw the form of Lumley Ferrers approaching towards them from the opposite end of the terrace: at the same instant, a dark cloud crept over the sky, the waters seemed overcast and the breeze fell: a chill and strange presentiment of evil shot across Ernest’s heart, and, like many imaginative persons, he was unconsciously superstitious as to presentiments.
“We are no longer alone,” said he, rising; “your cousin has doubtless learned our engagement, and comes to congratulate your suitor.”
“Tell me,” he continued musingly, as they walked on to meet Ferrers, “are you very partial to Lumley? what think you of his character?—it is one that perplexes me; sometimes I think it has changed since we parted in Italy—sometimes I think it has not changed, but ripened.”
“Lumley, I have known from a child,” replied Florence, “and see much to admire and like in him; I admire his boldness and candour; his scorn of the world’s littleness and falsehood; I like his good-nature—his gaiety—and fancy his heart better than it may seem to the superficial observer.”
“Yet he appears to me selfish and unprincipled.”
“It is from a fine contempt for the vices and follies of men that he has contracted the habit of consulting his own resolute will—and, believing everything done in this noisy stage of action a cheat, he has accommodated his ambition to the fashion. Though without what is termed genius, he will obtain a distinction and power that few men of genius arrive at.”